Page images
PDF
EPUB

since his death. Notwithstanding that their religious as well as poetic beauty demand their issue in a cheap, popular form, we should almost regret their severance from the connexion in which a wise and loving parental hand has placed them. As we meet them in turning over the pages of the biography they seem to us like the beautiful carvings, the string-courses, corbels, pendants, brackets, niches, and tabernacle work of a Christian cathedral, adorning and strengthening the solid fabric, while placing the ornamental in due subordination to the useful.

Although Dr. Croswell's poems were almost exclusively on topics suggested by the memorial seasons and observances of hallowed Christian usage or devoted to friendship, he occasionally wrote in a playful vein. His New Year's verses in the Argus for 1842, "From the Desk of Poor Richard, Jr.," are a clever reproduction with improvements of his own of that sage's maxims

Poor Richard knows full well distress
Is real, and no dream;

And yet life's bitterest ills have less
Of bitter than they seem.

Meet like a man thy coward pains,

And some, be sure, will flee;

Nor doubt the worst of what remains

Will blessings prove to thee.

In 1848 he was called upon to deliver a Commencement poem at Trinity College. The poein may be said, in the language of his biographer, "to be a metrical essay on the reverence due to sacred places and holy things, and an exhortation to the cultivation of such reverence, especially in the church and its academical institutions.' He reverts to his Alina Mater, Yale, with this allusion to its patron Berkeley.

There first we gazed on the serene expanse

Of Berkeley's bright and heavenly countenance,
And could not but contrast it, in our sport,
With thy pinched visage, prick-eared Davenport;
Nor queried, as we turned to either face,
Which were the real genius of the place.
Taught, in a brother's words, to love in thee
Earth's every virtue, wit in poesy,"
O Berkeley, as I real, with moistened eyes,
Of thy sublime but blasted enterprise,
Refusing, in thy pure, unselfish aim,
To sell to vulgar wealth a founder's fame,
But in thy fervor sacrificing all

To objects worthy of the name of Paul,-
What joy to see in our official line

A faith revived, identical with thine;

Pledged to fulfil the spirit of thy scheme,

And prove thy college no ideal dream.

And when, on yonder walls, we now survey

The man "whose grace chalked his successor's way," And study, Samuel, thy majestic head,

By Berkeley's son to heaven's anointing led,

And see the ways of Providence combine

The gentle bishop with the masculine,

We pray this noblest offspring of thy see
May honor Berkeley, nor dishonor thee.

In his ideal picture of a university, he pays a tribute to several living authors.

Thus in the morning, far from Babel's dust,
These August days might yet be days august,
And words of power the place might glorify,
Which willingly the world would not let die.

There Dana might, in happiest mood, rehearse
Some last great effort of his deathless verse;
Or Irving, like Arcadian, might beguile
The golden hours with his melodious style;
Or he who takes no second living rank
Among the classics of the Church-Verplanck;
Or he whose course "right onward" here begun,
Now sheds its brightness over Burlington,
(Where our young sons like noble sapii. gs grow,
And daughters like the polished pillars show,)
And with the elder worthies, join the throng
Of young adventurers for the prize of song.

[ocr errors]

TO MY FATHER.

My father, I recall the dream

Of childish joy and wonder, When thou wast young as I now seem, Say, thirty-three, or under; When on thy temples, as on mine, Time just began to sprinkle His first grey hairs, and traced the sign Of many a coming wrinkle.

I recognise thy voice's tone

As to myself I'm talking;

And this firm tread, how like thine own,

In thought, the study walking'

As, musing, to and fro I pass,

A glance across my shoulder Would bring thine image in the glass, Were it a trifle older.

My father, proud am I to bear

Thy face, thy form, thy stature,
But happier far might I but share
More of thy better nature;
Thy patient progress after good,
All obstacles disdaining,
Thy courage, faith, and fortitude,
And spirit uncomplaining.

Then for the day that I was born
Well might I joy, and borrow
No longer of the coming morn

Its trouble or its sorrow;
Content I'd be to take my chance
In either world, possessing
For my complete inheritance
Thy virtues and thy blessing!

[merged small][ocr errors]

While Nature's voice thus flouted me, A voice from heaven replied,

"O, weep not for the happy dead

Who in the Lord have died; Sweet is their rest who sleep in Christ, Though lost a while to thee; Tread in their steps, and sweeter still Your meeting hour shall be!

THIS ALSO SHALL PASS AWAY.

When morning sunbeams round me shed
Their light and influence blest,
When flowery paths before me spread,
And life in smiles is drest;

In darkling lines that dim each ray
I read, "This, too, shall pass away."

When murky clouds o'erhang the sky,
Far down the vale of years,
And vainly looks the tearful eye,
When not a hope appears,

Lo, characters of glory play

'Mid shades: "This, too, shall pass away." Elest words, that temper pleasure's beam, And lighten sorrow's gloom,

That early sadden youth's bright dream,
And cheer the old man's tomb.
Unto that world be ye my stay,

That world which sha.l not pass away.

PSALM CXXXVII,

By the waters of Babel we sat down and wept,
As we called our dear Zion to miad;
And our harps that in joy we so often had swept
Now sighed on the trees to the wind.

Then they that had carried us captive away,
In mockery challenged a song,

And ringing out mirth from our sadness, would say, "Sing the strains that to Zion belong."

O, how shall we sing the ineffable song
In a godless and barbarous land?

If the minstrels of Salem could do her such wrong,
Be palsied each cunning right hand.

Let my tongue to the roof of my mouth ever cling,
If aught else should its praises employ,
Or if Salem's high glories it choose not to sing,
Above all terrestrial joy.

Remember the children of Edom, O Lord,

How they cried, in Jerusalem's woe,

Her ramparts and battlements raze with the sword,
Her temples and towers overthrow.

O daughter of Babel! thy ruin makes haste;
And blessed be he who devours

Thy children with famine and misery waste,
As thou, in thy rapine, served ours.

A SUNDAY-SCHOOL HYMN.

The sparrow finds a house,

The little bird a nest;

Deep in thy dwelling, Lord, they come, And fold their young to rest.

And shall we be afraid

Our little ones to bring
Within thine ancient altar's shade,
And underneath thy wing?
There guard them as thine eye,

There keep them without spot,
That when the spoiler passeth by
Destruction touch them not.
There nerve their souls with might,
There nurse them with thy love,
There plume them for their final flight
To blessedness above.

HYMN FOR ADVENT.

While the darkness yet hovers,
The harbinger star
Peeps through and discovers
The dawn from afar;
To many an aching

And watch-wearied eye,
The dayspring is breaking
Once more from on high.
With lamps trimmed and burning
The Church on her way

To meet thy returning,

O bright King of day!
Goes forth and rejoices,
Exulting and free,
And sends from all voices
Hosannas to thee.

She casts off her sorrows,
To rise and to shie
With the lustre she borrows,
O Saviour! from thine.
Look down, for thine honor,
O Lord! and increase
In thy mercy upon her
The blessing of peace.
Her children with trembling
Await, but not fear,
Till the time of assembling
Before thee draws near;
When, freed from all sadness,
And sorrow, and pain,

They shall meet thee in gladness
And glory again.

[blocks in formation]

TRAVELLER'S HYMN.

"In journeyings often."

Lord! go with us, and we go

Safely through the weariest length, Travelling, if thou will'st it so,

In the greatness of thy strength; Through the day and through the dark, O'er the land, and o'er the sen, Speed the wheel, and steer the bark, Bring us where we feign would be.

In the self-controlling car,

'Mid the engine's iron din, Waging elemental war,

Flood without, and flood within, Through the day, and through the dark, O'er the land, and o'er the sea,

Speed the wheel, and steer the bark,
Bring us where we fain would be.

HORACE BUSHNELL. THIS eminent thinker and divine is a native of Connecticut, born about the year 1804, in New Preston, in the town of Washington, Litchfield county. He was, as a boy, employed in a fullingmill in his native village. He became a graduate of Yale in 1827. After this he was engaged for a while as a literary editor of the Journal of Commerce, at New York. He was, from 1829 to 1831, a tutor in Yale College; and, at this time, applied himself to the study of law, and afterwards of theology. In May, 1833. he was called to his present post of ministerial duty, as pastor of the North Congregational Church, in Hartford. He early became a contributor to the

higher religious periodicals. In 1837, he delivered the Phi Beta Kappa oration at New IIaven, On the Principles of National Greatness. His series of theological publications commenced in 1847, with his volume, Views of Christian Nurture, and of Subjects adjacent thereto. In this he presents his views of the spiritual economy of revivals, in which he marks out the philosophical limitations to a system which had been carried to excess. The "Organic Unity of the Family" is another chapter of this work, which shows the

Storace Bushvele

author's happy method of surrounding and penetrating a subject. This was followed, in 1849, by his book entitled God in Christ-Three Dicourses, delivered at New Haven, Cambridge, and Andover, with a Preliminary Dissertation on Language. The view of the doctrine of the Trinity set forth in this book, met with discussion on all sides, and much opposition from some of the author's Congregational brethren, and was the means of bringing him before the Ministerial Association, with which he is connected. The argument was a metaphysical one, and pursued by Dr. Bushnell with his customary acumen. The main points of defence were presented to the public in 1851, in a new volume, Christ in Theology; being the Answer of the Author before the Hartford Central Association of Ministers, October, 1849, for the Doctrines of the Book entitled God in Christ. As an indication of the material with which Dr. Bushnell has to deal in these discourses, the enumeration of the elements of theological opinion may be cited from the Preface to this volume. "To see brought up," he writes, "in distinct array before us the multitudes of leaders and schools, and theologic wars of only the century past, the Supralapsarians and Sublapsarians; the Arminianizers and the true Calvinists; the Pelagians and Augustinians; the Tasters and the Exercisers; Exercisers by Divine Efficiency and by Human Self-Efficiency; the love-to-being-in-general virtue, the willingto-be-damned virtue, and the love-to-one'sgreatest-happiness virtue; no ability, all ability, and moral and natural ability distingui-hed; disciples by the new-creating act of Omnipotence, and by change of the governing purpose; atonement by punishment and by expression; limited and general; by imputation and without imputation; Trinitarians of a three-fold distinction, of three psychologic persons, or of three sets of attributes; under a unity of oneness, or of necessary agreement, or of society and deliberative council;-nothing, I think, would more certainly disenchant us of our confidence in systematic orthodoxy and the possibility, in human language, of an exact theologic science, than an exposition so practical and serious, and withal so indisputably mournful, so mournfully indisputable." The remaining theological writings of Dr. Bush

nell are included in his contributions to the Reviews.*

In another department of composition, that of the philosophical essay, mingling subtle and refined speculation with the affairs of every-day life, he has achieved distinguished success, in a manner peculiarly his own. With this class of his writings may be included a review of Brigham's Influence of Religion on Health in the Christian Spectator (viii. 51); an article on Taste and Fashion, in the New Englander, 1843; a Discourse before the Alumni of Yale College, 1843, on The Moral Tendencies and Results of Human History; an address before the Hartford County Agricultural Society, 1846; Work and Play, an oration before the Phi Beta Kappa, at Cambridge, 1848 and several special sermons, which have been printed, entitled Unconscious Influence; the Day of Roads--tracing the progress of civilization by the great national highways; a similar discourse, The Northern Iron; Barbarism the First Danger, in allusion to emigration; Religious Music; and Politics under the Law of God. In 1849, Dr. Bushnell pronounced an oration, The Fathers of New England, before the New England Society of New York; and, in 1851, Speech for Connecticut, being an Ilistorical Estimate of the State, delivered before, and printed by, the Legislature.

PLAY, A LIFE of freedom.†

Thus it is that work prepares the state of play. Passing over now to this latter, observe the intense longing of the race for some such higher and freer state of bei: g. They call it by no name. Probably most of them have but dimly conceived what they are after. The more evident will it be that they are after this, when we find them covering over the whole ground of life, and filling up the contents of history, with their counterfeits or misconceived attempts. If the hidden fire is seen bursting up on every side, to vent itself in flame, we may certainly know that the ground is full.

Let it not surprise you, if I name, as a first illustration here, the general devotion of our race to money. This passion for money is allowed to be a sordid passion,-one that is rankest in the least generous and most selfish of mankind; and yet a conviction has always been felt, that it must have its heat in the most central fires and divinest affinities of our nature. Thus, the poet calls it the auri sacra fames,-sacra, as being a curse, and that in the divine life of the race. Childhood being passed, and the play-fund of motion so far spent that running on foot no longer appears to be the joy it was, the older child, now called a man, fancies that it will make him happy to ride! Or he imagines; which is much the same, some loftier state of being, -call it rest, retirement, competence, independence, -no matter by what name, only be it a condition of use, ease, liberty, and pure enjoyment. And so we find the whole race at work to get rid of work; drudging themselves to-day, in the hope of play tomorrow. This is that sacra fames, which, miscon

Articles: Review of "The Errors of the Times,' charge by the Rt. Rev. T. C. Brownell, Bishop of the Diocese of Connecticut: New Englander, vol. ii., 1644. Evangelical Alliance: Ib. v. 1847. Christian Comprehensiveness: Ib. vi. 1848. The Christian Trinity, a Practical Truth: Ib. xii. 1854.

In 1847, Dr. Bushnell addressed a "Letter to the Pope," which was printed in London.

From the Phi Beta Kappa Oration, 1848,

ceiving its own unutterable longings after spíritual play, proposes to itself the dull felicity of cessation, and drives the world to madness in pursuit of a counterfeit, which it is work to obtain, work also to keep, and yet harder work oftentimes to enjoy.

Here, too, is the secret of that profound passion for the drama, which has been so conspicuous in the cultivated nations. We love to see life in its feeling and activity, separated from its labors and historic results. Could we see all human changes transpire poetically or creatively, that is, in play, letting our soal play with them as they pass, then it were only poetry to live. Then to admire, love, laugh, then to abhor, pity, weep,-all were alike grateful to us; for the view of sufferi. g separated from all reality, save what it has to feeling, only yields a painful joy, which is the deeper joy because of the pain. Hence the written drama, offeri g to view in its impersonations a life one side of line, a life in which all the actings appear without the ends and simply as in play, becomes to the cultivated reader a sprig of the intensest and most captivating spiritual incitement. He beholds the creative genius of a man playing out impersonated groups and societies of men, clothing each with life, passion, individuality, and character, by the fertile activity of his own inspired feeling. Meantime the writer himself is hidden, and cannot even suggest his existence. Hence egotism, which also is a form of work, the dullest, most insipid, least inspiring of all human demonstrations, is nowhere allowed to obtrude itself. As a reader, too, he has no ends to think of or to fear,-nothing to do, but to play the characters into his feeling as creatures existing for his sake. In this view, the drama, as a product of genius, is, within a certain narrow limit, the realization of play.

But far less effectively, or more faintly, when it is acted. Then the counterfeit, as it is more remote, is more feeble. In the reading we invent our own sceneries, clothe into form and expression each one of the characters, and play out our own liberty in them as freely, and sometimes as divinely, as they. Whatever reader, therefore, has a soul of true life and fire within him, finds all expectation balked, when he becomes an auditor ad spectator. The scenery is tawdry and flat, the characters, defi nitely measured, have lost their infinity, so to speak, and thus their freedom, and what before was play descends to nothing better or more inspired than work. It is called going to the play, but it should rather be called going to the work, that is, going to the work, that is, to see a play worked, (yes, an opera! that is it!)— men and women inspired through their memo: y, and acting their inspirations by rote, panting into love, pumping at the fountains of grief, whippir g out the passions into fury, and dying to fulfil the contract of the evening, by a forced holding of the breath. And yet this feeble counterfeit of play, which some of us would call only "very tragical mirth," has a power to the multitude. They are moved, thrilled it may be, with a strange delight. It is as if a something in their nature, higher than they themselves know, were quickened into power, -namely, that divine instinct of play, in which the summit of our nature is most clearly revealed.

In like manner, the passion of our race for war, and the eager admiration yielded to warlike exploits, are resolvable principally into the same fundamental cause. Mere ends and uses do not satisfy us. We must get above prudence and economy, into something that partakes of inspiration, be the cost what it may. Hence war, another and yet more magnificent counterfeit of play. Thus there is a great and lofty virtue that we call

courage (cour-age), taking our name from the heart. It is the greatness of a great heart, the repose and confidence of a man whose soul is rested in truth and principle. Such a man has no ends ulterior to his duty,-duty itself is his end. He is in it therefore as in play, lives it as an inspiration. Lifted thus out of mere prudence and contrivance, he is also liftel above fear. Life to him is the outgoing of his great heart (heart-age), action from the heart. And because he now can die, without being shaken or perturbel by any of the dastardly feelings that belong to self-seeking and work, because he partakes of the impassibility of his principles, we call him a hero, regarding him as a kind of god, a man who has gone up into the sphere of the divine.

Then, since courage is a joy so high, a virtue of so great majesty, what could happen but that many will covet both the internal exaltation and the outward repute of it? Thus comes bravery, which is the counterfeit, or mock virtue. Courage is of the heart, as we have sail; bravery is of the will. One is the spontaneus joy and repose of a truly great soul; the other, bravery, is after an end ulterior to itself, and, in that view, is but a form of work,about the hardest work, too, I fancy, that some men undertake. What can be harder, in fact, than to act a great heart, when one has nothing but a will wherewith to do it?

Thus you will see that courage is above danger, bravery in it, doing battle on a level with it. One is secure and tranquil, the other suppresses agitation or conceals it. A right mind fortifies one, shame stimulates the other. Faith is the nerve of one, risk the plague and tremor of the other. For if I may tell you just here a very important secret, there be many that are called heroes who are yet without courage. They brave danger by their will, when their heart trembles. They make up in violence what they want in tranquillity, and drown the tumult of their fears in the rage of their passions. Enter the heart and you shall find, too often, a dastard spirit lurking in your hero. Call him still a brave man, if you will, only remember that he lacks

courage.

No, the true hero is the great, wise man of duty, -he whose soul is armed by truth and supported by the smile of God,-he who meets life's perils with a cautious but tranquil spirit, gathers strength by facing its storms, and dies, if he is called to die, as a Christian victor at the post of duty. And if we must have heroes, and wars wherein to make them, there is no so brilliant war as a war with wrong, no hero so fit to be sung as he who has gained the bloodless victory of truth and mercy.

[ocr errors]

But if bravery be not the same as courage, still it is a very imposing and plausible counterfeit. The man himself is told, after the occasion is past, how heroically he bore himself, and when once his nerves have become tranquillized, he begins even to believe it. And since we cannot stay content in the dull, uninspired world of economy and work, we are as ready to see a hero as he to be one. Nay, we must have our heroes, as I just said, and we are ready to harness ourselves, by the million, to any man who will let us fight him out the name. Thus we find out occasions for war,-wrongs to be redressed, revenges to be taken, such as we may feign inspiration and play the great heart under. collect armies, and dress up leaders in gold and high colors, meaning, by the brave look, to inspire some notion of a hero beforehand. Then we set the men in phalanxes and squadrons, where the personality itself is taken away, and a vast impersonal person called an army, a magnanimous and brave monster, is all that remains. The masses of fierce

:

We

color, the glitter of steel, the dancing plumes, the waving flags, the deep throb of the music lifting every foot,-under these the living acres of men, possessed by the one thought of playing brave today, are rolled on to battle. Thunder, fire, dust, blood, groans,-what of these?-nobody thinks of these, for nobody dares to think till the day is over, and then the world rejoices to behold a new batch

of heroes!

We

And this is the devil's play, that we call war.
We have had it going on ever since the old geologic
era was finished. We are sick enough of the matter
of it. We understand well enough that it is not
good economy. But we cannot live on work.
must have courage, inspiration, greatness, play.
Even the moral of our nature, that which is to
weave us into social union with our kind before
God, is itself thirstig after play; and if we cannot
have it in good, why then let us have it in as good

as we can. It is at least some comfort, that we do
not mean quite as bally in these wars as some men
say.
We are not in love with murder, we are not
simple tigers in feeling, and some of us come out of
battle with kind and gentle qualities left. We only
must have our play.

In 1858, Dr. Bushnell published Sermons for the New Life (12mo, pp. 456), a series of twenty-three discourses, dedicated to his "dear flock in Hartford," marked by the spirituality, elevated views, ingenious illustration and fervent eloquence which characterize all his productions of this class, and his writings generally. The same year he published Nature and the Supernatural, as together Constituting the one System of God (12mo, pp. 528), a theological treatise "undertaken mainly to establish the credibility and historic fact of what is supernatural in the Christian Gospels;" a subject pursued with the author's accustomed acumen and originality of treatment. In 1860, appeared Christian Nurture (12mo, pp. 407), an enlargement and dehim under this title, and now extended by the velopment of a brief work previously issued by introduction of thirteen new essays or discourses, arranged under the two-fold heads of "The Doctrine" and "The Mode," or the theory and practice of Christianity, the latter with especial relation to the family. In 1864, he collected a number of essays and addresses, under the title of the first of the series, Work and Play, or Literary Varieties (12mo, pp. 464). Several of these are of an historical character, as the "Historical Estimate" of Connecticut--a speech delivered before the Legislature of that State, at the inauguration of a Normal School in 1851, and others of much ingenuity of illustration on social affairs, as The Age of Homespun," " The There has been much of speculation among the Day of Roads," &c. This is one of the most learned concerning the origin of chivalry; nor has popular in subject of the author's books, being it always been clear to what human elements this of a purely literary and philosophical character. singular institution is to be referred. But when we The same year he published Christ and his Sallook on man, not as a creature of mere u derstand-vation, in Sermons variously related thereto ing and reason, but as a creature also of play, essentially a poet in that which constitutes his higher life, we seem to have a solution of the origin of chivalry, which is sufficient, whether it be true or not. In the forswearing of labor, in the brave adventures of a life in arms, in the intense ideal devotion to woman as her protector and avenger, in the self-renouncing and almost self-oblivious worship of honor,-what do we see in these but the mock

Note also this, that, since the metaphysics of fighting have been investigated, we have learned to make much of what we call the moral of the army; by which we mean the feeling that wants to play brave. Only it is a little sad to remember that this same moral, as it is called, is the true, eternal, moral

nature of the man thus terribly perverted, that which was designed to link him to his God and his kind, and ought to be the spring of his imu.ortal inspirations.

moral doings of a creature who is to
creature who is to escape self-love
and the service of ends in a free, spontaneous life of
goodness, in whom courage, delicacy, honor, disin-
terested deeds, are themselves to be the inspiration,
as they are the end, of his being?

I might also show, passing into the sphere of religion, how legal obedience, which is work, always descends into superstition, and thus that religion must, in its very nature and life, be a form of play,

-a worship offered, a devotion paid, not for some ulterior end, but as being its own end and joy. I might also show, in the same manner, that all the enthusiastic, fanatical, and properly quietistic modes of religion are as many distinct counterfeits, and, in that manner, illustrations of my subject. But this you will see at a glance, without illustration. Only

In

observe how vast a field our illustrations cover.
the infatuated zeal of our race for the acquisition of
money, in the drama, in war, in chivalry, in per-
verted religion,-in all these forms, covering almost
the whole ground of humanity with counterfeits of
play, that are themselves the deepest movements of
the race, I show you the boundless sweep of this
divine instinct, and how surely we may know that
the perfected state of man is a state of beauty, truth.
and love, where life is its own end and joy.

(12mo, pp. 456), a series of twenty-one discourses. In 1865 appeared a new theological work, The Vicarious Sacrifice, Grounded on Principles of Universal Obligation.

**Dr. Bushnell (who resigned his pastorate some years since), has published three later works: Moral Uses of Dark Things, 1868; Women's Suffrage, or Reform Against Nature, 1869, which agitation he characterizes as “an attempt to make trumpets out of flutes, and sun-flowers out of violets out of violets ;" and Sermons on Living Subjects, 1872. In the former book, the domain of natural theology is sought to be enlarged from the merely physical to the moral uses “of all the contrivances to be looked for in God's works." Yet the author has chosen to cast his views -to quote his own words "in a manner as neglectful of system as possible," that they may be read with the varying moods of the mind. This delicate task has been conducted with skill and thoughtful labor, unfolding the deeper meanings of night and sleep, of want and waste, of bad government, of oblivion or dead history, of physical pain, of winter, of plague and pestilence, of insanity, of the mutabilities of life, etc.

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]
« PreviousContinue »