{14} This illustration, as well as all the thoughts of the paragraph
containing it, is borrowed from the noble Sermon of Dr. Bushnell on
“Unconscious Influence.” I give his words _in extenso_; for I believe
few grander passages can be found anywhere: “But you must not conclude
that influences of this kind are insignificant because they are unnoticed
and noiseless. How is it in the natural world? Behind the mere show,
the outward noise, and stir of the world, nature always conceals her hand
of control, and the laws by which she rules. Who ever saw with the eye,
for example, or heard with the ear, the exertions of that tremendous
astronomic force, which every moment holds the compact of the physical
universe together? The lightning is, in fact, but a mere fire-fly spark
in comparison; but because it glares on the clouds, and thunders so
terribly in the air, and rives the tree or rock where it falls, many will
be ready to think that it is a vastly more potent agent than gravity.
“The Bible calls the good man’s life a light, and it is the nature of
light to flow out spontaneously in all directions, and fill the world
unconsciously with its beams. So the Christian shines, it would say, not
so much because he will, as because he is a luminous object—not that the
active influence of Christians is made of no account in the figure, but
only that this symbol of light has its propriety in the fact, that their
unconscious influence is the chief influence, and has the precedence in
its power over the world—and yet, there are many who will be ready to
think that light is a very tame and feeble instrument, because it is
noiseless. An earthquake, for example, is to them a much more vigorous
and effective agency. Hear how it comes thundering through the solid
foundations of nature! It rocks a whole continent. The noblest works of
man, cities, monuments, and temples, are in a moment levelled to the
ground, or swallowed down the opening gulfs of fire. Little do they
think that the light of every morning, the soft, genial, and silent
light, is an agent many times more powerful. But let the light of the
morning cease and return no more, let the hour of morning come, and bring
with it no dawn; the outcries of a horror-stricken world fill the air,
and make, as it were, the darkness audible. The beasts go wild and
frantic at the loss of the sun. The vegetable growths turn pale and die.
A chill creeps on, and frosty winds begin to howl across the freezing
earth. Colder, and yet colder is the night. The vital blood at length,
of all creatures stops congealed. Down goes the frost toward the earth’s
centre. The heart of the sea is frozen; nay, the earthquakes are
themselves frozen in under their fiery caverns. The very globe itself,
too, and all the fellow-planets that have lost their sun, are to become
mere balls of ice, swinging silent in the darkness. Such is the light,
which revisits us in the silence of the morning. It makes no shock or
scar. It would not wake an infant in his cradle, and yet it perpetually
new creates the world, rescuing it each morning as a prey from night and
chaos. So the Christian is a light, even ‘the light of the world;’ and
we must not think that because he shines insensibly or silently, as a
mere luminous object, he is therefore powerless. The greatest powers are
ever those which lie back of the little stirs and commotions of nature;
and I verily believe that the insensible influences of good men are as
much more potent than what I have called their voluntary or active, as
the great silent powers of nature are of greater consequence than her
little disturbances and ‘tumults.’”
I have been told that Dr. Bushnell’s Theology is unsound on the
fundamental doctrine of the Trinity. I have not seen any thing to prove
this charge in “The New Life” (the only volume I have ever seen of his);
but, while I cannot borrow his thoughts without an acknowledgment, I am
bound to mention the allegation as a caution to those who fall in with
his works. “The New Life” is full of noble sentiments, most eloquently
enforced; and there is great danger now-a-days lest sentiments of this
sort should be accepted as compounding for want of definite dogma—the
only foundation of all true Religion. A Religion of sentiment only, not
holding of a Creed, would resemble a body of flesh and blood, without a
substructure of solid bones.