Horace Bushnell The Citizen

Author : Edwin D. Mead
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781331251408
Total Pages : 26 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (514 download)

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Download or read book Horace Bushnell, the Citizen (Classic Reprint) written by Edwin D. Mead and published by . This book was released on 2015-07-12 with total page 26 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Horace Bushnell, the Citizen When the Twentieth Century Club of Boston was organized, half a dozen years ago, the first general meeting of the club was a memorial to Phillips Brooks, who had been interested in the idea of such a club in Boston and had purposed to become a member. At this memorial meeting there were addresses by Edward Everett Hale and Dr. Donald, Brooks's successor as rector of Trinity Church. In the course of his address, which was a fine analysis of Brooks's genius and influence, Dr. Donald observed that that influence did not lie in the contribution of anything distinctly original to American religious thought; Phillips Brooks's theology, he said, was "simply the theology of Bushnell." This is substantially the truth; and it could be said of great numbers of the most thoughtful and influential men in the American pulpit to-day. In the religious turmoil and confusion of a generation ago, Bushnell was a great light and a positive guide, mediating to many minds a rational theology and a noble and satisfying method. Washington Gladden undoubtedly spoke for hundreds when he recently wrote: "I could not have remained in the ministry, an honest man, if it had not been for him. The time came, long before I saw him, when the legal or forensic theories of the Atonement were not true for me; if I had not found his 'God in Christ' and 'Christ in Theology, ' I must have stopped preaching. Dr. Bushnell gave me a moral theology, and helped me to believe in the justice of God. If I have had any gospel to preach during the last thirty-five years, it is because he led me into the light and joy of it." Horace Bushnell was certainly the most original and influential theologian in New England in this last half of the nineteenth century, save Theodore Parker alone. It is interesting to know that the two great thinkers knew each other personally. In 1843 - in which year also it is pleasant to read that Bushnell walked arm in arm with George Ripley of Brook Farm to hear Websters Bunker Hill - oration he spent an evening with Theodore Parker, when they "went over the whole ground of theology together"; and Dr. Hunger, who mentions the fact in his new biography of Bushnell, observes that it is safe to say that neither appealed to the standards. Greatly as the two men differed in intellectual nature, manner, emphasis and conclusions, their community was far more impressive and important; they were fellow-workers in liberating New England religion from the tyranny of tradition and authority, and in helping it to the method of reason and nature. Bushnell, as Dr. Hunger truly says, "questioned the prevailing orthodoxy at all points, - inspiration, regeneration, trinity, atonement, miracles." The character of his appeal to a higher court than that of any current definitions is well illustrated by the following passage from one of his controversial treatises: "I do peremptorily refuse to justify myself, as regards this matter of trinity, before any New England standard. We have no standard better than the residuary tritheistic compost, such as may be left us after we have cast away that which alone made the old historic doctrine of trinity possible. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.