One of the most characteristic and interesting things about Dr. Bushnell is the method he took to find his way between this spiritual view of things and that world of theological orthodoxy where he stood by virtue of his profession. It was a very hard and dry world,—a world chiefly of definitions,—but it covered vital realities, and so must have had some connection with the other world. Dr. Bushnell bridged the chasm by a theory of language which he regarded as original with himself. It was not new, but he elaborated it in an original way and with great ability. In its main feature it was simply a claim to use in theology the symbolism of poetry; it regarded language as something that attempts to make one feel the inexpressible truth, rather than a series of definitions which imply that it can be exactly stated in words; it held that truth is larger than any form which attempts to express it; it images and reflects truth instead of defining it.
This theory might be assumed without so long explication as he gave, but it was greatly needed in the theological world, which at that time was sunk in a sea of metaphysical definition, and consumed with a lust for explaining everything in heaven and earth in terms of alphabetic plainness. Dr. Bushnell was not only justified by the necessity of his situation in resorting to his theory, but he had the right which every man of genius may claim for himself. Any one whose thought is broader than that about him, whose feeling is deeper, whose imagination is loftier, is entitled to such a use of language as shall afford him fullest expression; for he alone knows just how much of thought, feeling, and imagination, how much of himself, he puts into his words; they are coin whose value he himself has a right to indicate by his own stamp. There is no pact with others to use language in any given way, except upon some very broad basis as to the main object of language. The first object is not to secure definite and comprehensive understanding, but to give expression, and to start thought which may lead to full understanding—as the parable hides the thought until you think it out.
Dr. Bushnell's theory did not blind the ordinary reader. No writer is more easily apprehended by the average mind if he has any sympathy with the subjects treated; but it was an inconvenient thing for his theological neighbors to manage. While they insisted on "the evident meaning of the words,"—a mischievous phrase,—he was breathing his meaning into attentive souls by the spirit which he had contrived to hide within his words. It is a way that genius has,—as Abt Vogler says:—
"But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear:
The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians know."
The first thing that brought Dr. Bushnell out of the world of theology into the world of literature was his oration before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College in 1848. He had achieved a reputation as a preacher of remarkable insight for such as had ears to hear, and he was already in the thick of theological controversy; but his fine power of expression and breadth of thought had not been specially noticed. This oration introduced him into the world of letters. Mr. J. T. Fields—the most discerning critic of the day—said to the writer that the oration was heard with surprise and delight, and that it gave the speaker an assured place in the ranks of literature. That he should have been so readily welcomed by the literary guild is not strange, for the title of his oration—'Work and Play'—led the way into a discussion of the secret that underlies all works of genius. For once, the possessor of the divine gift heard its secret revealed and himself explained to himself; his work was set before him as the full play of his spirit. Beginning with nature, where our author always began, and finding there a free and sportive element, he carries it into human life; making the contention that its aim should be, and that its destiny will be, to free itself from the constraint of mere work and rise into that natural action of the faculties which may be called play—a moral and spiritual process. His conclusion is that—
"if the world were free,—free, I mean, of themselves; brought up, all, out of work into the pure inspiration of truth and charity,—new forms of personal and intellectual beauty would appear, and society itself reveal the Orphic movement. No more will it be imagined that poetry and rhythm are accidents or figments of the race, one side of all ingredient or ground of nature. But we shall know that poetry is the real and true state of man; the proper and last ideal of souls, the free beauty they long for, and the rhythmic flow of that universal play in which all life would live."
The key to Dr. Bushnell is to be found in this passage, and it is safe to say of him that in hardly a page of a dozen volumes is he false to it. He is always a poet, singing out of "the pure inspiration of truth and charity," and keeping ever in mind that poetry and rhythm are not figments outside of nature, but the real and true state of man and the proper and last ideal of souls.
The centrality of this thought is seen in his style. It is a remarkable style, and is only to be appreciated when the man is understood. It is made up of long sentences full of qualifying phrases until the thought is carved into perfect exactness; or—changing the figure—shade upon shade is added until the picture and conception are alike. But with all this piling up of phrases, he not only did not lose proportion and rhythm, but so set down his words that they read like a chant and sound like the breaking of waves upon the beach. Nor does he ever part with poetry in the high sense in which he conceived it. I will not compare his style, as to merit, with that of Milton and Jeremy Taylor and Sir Thomas Browne, but he belongs to their class; he has the same majestic swing, and like them he cannot forbear singing, whatever he may have to say. His theme may be roads, or city plans, or agriculture, or emigration, or the growth of law; yet he never fails of lifting his subject into that higher world of the imagination where the real truth of the subject is to be found, and is made to appear as poetry. It would be unjust to identify him so thoroughly with the poets if it should lead to the thought that he was not a close and rigorous thinker. It should not be forgotten that all great prose-writers, from Plato down to Carlyle and Emerson, stand outside of poetry only by virtue of their form and not by virtue of their thought; indeed, poet and thinker are interchangeable names. Dr. Bushnell wrote chiefly on theology, and the value and efficacy of his writings lie in the fact that imagination and fact, thought and sentiment, reason and feeling, are each preserved and yet so mingled as to make a single impression.
This combination of two realms or habits of thought appears on every page. He was, as Novalis said of Spinoza, "A God-intoxicated man," but it was God as containing humanity in himself. His theology was a veritable Jacob's ladder, on which the angels of God ascend and descend; and if in his thought they descended before they ascended, it was because he conceived of humanity as existing in God before it was manifest in creation; and if his head was among the stars, his feet were always firmly planted on the earth. This twofoldness finds a curious illustration in the sub-titles of several of his books. 'The Vicarious Sacrifice' does not spring alone out of the divine nature, but is 'Grounded in Principles of Universal Obligation.' 'Nature and the Supernatural'—the great antithesis in theology—constitute 'The One System of God.' 'Women's Suffrage' is 'The Reform against Nature'—the best book, I must be permitted to say, on either side of this much-debated question.
It is a popular impression of Dr. Bushnell that he was the subject of his imagination, and that it ran away with him in the treatment of themes which required only severe thought: the impression is a double mistake: theology does not call for severe thought, alone nor mainly; but first and chiefly for the imagination, and the seeing and interpreting eye that usually goes with it; its object is to find spirit under form, to discover what the logos expresses. For this the imagination is the chief requisite. It is not a vagrant and irresponsible faculty, but an inner eye whose vision is to be trusted like that of the outer; it has in itself the quality of thought, and is not a mere picture-making gift. Dr. Bushnell trained his imagination to work on certain definite lines, and for a definite end—namely, to bring out the spiritual meaning hidden within the external form. He worked in the spirit of Coleridge's words:—