Christ and His Salvation
In Sermons variously related thereto. By . New York : Charles Scribner.
THESE sermons are distinguished from the ordinary discourses of the pulpit by being the product not merely of religious faith and feeling, but of religious genius. They embody the thought and experience of a life, and the ideas they inculcate are not so much the dogmas of a sect as the divinations of an individual. “ This is Christianity as it has been verified in my consciousness,” might be taken as the motto of the volume. The result is, that the collection is an addition to religious literature, and will be read with satisfaction for its stimulating effect on the religious sense by hundreds who may disagree with its direct teachings.
The two most striking and characteristic sermons in the volume are the first and the last, respectively entitled, “Christ waiting to find Room,” a masterly analysis of the worldliness of the so-called Christian world, and “ Heaven Opened,” a plea equally masterly for the existence in man of a supernatural sense to discern supernatural things. Between these come the sermons entitled, “The Gentleness of God,” “The Insight of Love,” “Salvation for the Lost Condition,” “ The Bad Mind makes a Bad Element,” and “ The Wrath of the Lamb,” which illustrate so well the union in Dr. Bushnell’s mind of practical sagacity and force of thought with keenness and reach of spiritual vision, that we select them from the rest as particularly worthy of the reader’s attention. Indeed, to have written these discourses is to have done the work of a ministry.
The peculiarity of the whole volume, and a singular peculiarity in a collection of sermons, is the absence of commonplace. The writer’s method in thinking is to bring his mind into close contact with things instead of phrases, — to think round his subject, and think into his subject, and, if possible, think through his subject to the law on which it depends ; and thus, when his thinking results in no novelty of view, it is still the indorsement of an accepted truth by a fresh perception of it. Truths in such a process never put on the character of truisms, but are as vital to the last observer as to the first. There is hardly a page in the volume which is not original, in the sense of recording original impressions of objects, individually seen, grasped, and examined. There are numerous originalities of a different kind, which may not be so pleasing to some classes of Christians,—as when he aims to show that an accredited spiritual form does not express a corresponding spiritual fact, or as when he splits some shell of creed which imprisons rather than embodies the kernel of faith, and lets the oppressed truth go free.
This power of penetrating thought, so determined as at times to wear a look of doggedness, — this analysis which shrinks from no problems, which is provoked by obstacles into intenser effort, and which is almost fanatical in its desire to get at the idea and reason of everything it probes,— is relieved by a richly sympathetic and imaginative nature, — indeed, is so welded with it, that insight and analysis serve each other, and cool reason gives solidity to ecstatic experience. Perhaps as a seer Dr. Bushnell may be more certain of recognition than as a reasoner. Whatever may be thought of the orthodoxy of the doctrines he has rationalized, there can be no doubt as to the reality of the spiritual states he has described. His intellectual method may be wrong or incomplete, but it in some way enables him to reach the substance of Christian life and light and love and joy.
There are passages in the volume which are all aglow with the sacred fire of that rapture which rewards only those souls that soar into the regions where the objects that kindle it abide; and this elevation which touches ecstasy, this effluence from the spiritual mood of the writer, is not limited to special bursts of eloquence, but gleams along the lines of many a clinching argument, and flashes out from many an uncadenced period.
The style of the book is what might be expected from the character of the author and the processes of his thinking. The mental state dictates the form of the sentence and the selection of the words. Thought and expression, so to speak, breed in and in. There is a certain roughness in the strength of the man, which is ever asserting itself through his cultured vigor ; and in the diction, rustic plainness of speech alternates with the nomenclature of metaphysics, rugged sense with lifting raptures, and curt, blunt, homely expression with vivid, animating, and harmonious eloquence. But whatever may be his form of words, he always loads them with meaning, and with his own meaning. He is not a fluent writer, but his resources of expression ever correspond to his richness of thought. And if his style cannot be said to bend gracefully to the variations of his subject, it still bends and does not break. In felicity and originality of epithet, the usual, sign of a writer’s genuineness of perception, he is excelled by no theologian of the time.
He also has that power of pithy and pointed language which so condenses a statement of a fact or principle that it gives forth the diamond sparkle of epigram. The effect of wit is produced while the purpose is the gravest possible : as when he tells some brother religionists, who base their creeds on the hyperboles of Scripture, that they mistake interjections for propositions, — or as when he reproves those pretenders to grace who count it apparently “ a kind of merit that they live loosely enough to make salvation by merit impossible.”
The animating spirit of the volume is a desire to bring men’s minds into contact with what is vital in religion, and this leads to many a sharp comment both on the dogmatism of sects and the rationalism of critics. Dr. Bushnell always seeks that in religion which not merely illumines the mind, but invigorates the will. It is not the form of a doctrine, but the force in the form, and its power to impart force to the believer, which engages his attention. In pursuing this method he displays alternately the qualities of an interpreter and of an iconoclast; but his object is the same, whether he evolves unexpected meanings from an accredited dogma, or assails the sense in which it is generally received. And so tenacious is his hold on the life of Christianity, and so vivid his mode of presenting it, that both dogmatist and rationalist must feel, in reading his volume, that he has given its proper prominence to much in Christianity which their methods tempt them to overlook.