that are sudden and, to all appearance, supernatural. We find that men rise up suddenly, and go to the house of their Father, and declare that they have received a strength and a blessing that they never knew before. All down the ages-ringing clear and distinct, loud above all the cries of human strife and sin and misery-there come to us the litany of the penitent and the joyful hymns of the reconciled. We hear and see-thank God that we do hear and see!—even in the alleys and the garrets of our great cities, how drunkards suddenly become sober, outcasts chaste, profligates pure, and even churls bountiful, merciful, loving, and kind. And we see that this is attributed by each one and all to the fact that they have heard that Voice, have risen and gone to the Father, and have been restored.

Men may mock at all this; may tell us that "the Father's house is all a dream, and that" the Father " has no existence; but the "robe " and the "ring" with which the returning prodigals are clothed and adorned are facts which they cannot deny; and it is not scientific, it is not philosophic, to ignore such facts in the history of eighteen centuries of human experience.

We say, then, that the old Gospel theory of the fall, restoration, and deliverance of man is the theory that best accords with the facts. And if so, then for you, brethren, who are gathered here on this day in which we celebrate the first coming of Him who told this story to glad ears, and whose story has sounded again and again in the ears of sorrowful mankind ever since-especially for you, youth of this great University, who are gathered here in this home of science and of learning to receive the portion of goods that falleth to each one of you—your share in the great inheritance of the agesthe heirs of the past, the hopes of the future-for you this comes to-day as a true and Divine word: "Arise, and go to thy Father." Are there here those who know the reality of that word ?--here, where once and again in all its long history of successful effort and of crowned endeavour there must have been, ever following these as their shadows, the story of the wrecked and wasted life, of the sad remorse and despair over opportunities cast away, and over hopes. that could never return? If there be here one young heart that has known what it is to say, "I will arise and go to my Father; the mere gratification of the intellect has not satisfied me; indulgence in sensual pleasure has degraded, and not elevated, my being; I am wearied with satiety and vexed with remorse "-if any such are here

they must have known this also, that in the hour when they went to the Father they regained strength; that it was an hour of reconciliation, an hour of glad and kindly reception. Who that has ever fought the battle, not merely with sin in the life, but with sin in the memory-who that has ever struggled against a depraved imagination who that has ever fought a young man's battle with sin in the past or the present, and then said, "In spite of all that can be said against it, I will try that old remedy; I will arise and go to my Father; no specious pleadings of the sceptical intellect shall keep me back "-I ask, have you not gained strength— have you not faced old memory-and have you not struggled against the temptation to sin with a new life? If you have done so, you have had an experimental proof of the reality of the old faith, which is a more certain evidence than you can gain from books on theology. You have tried the remedy, and He has redeemed your soul. And if there be one here who knows, even in the opening of his manhood, something of the sadness and weariness that comes from indulged desires, or from penitent regret, and who is questioning in his own mind, "Is there any truth in what teachers tell us of the fall and the restoration, of the disease and the remedy?"-oh, young man, whose feet are passing along near the meeting-place of these two ways, the one leading to life and the other to death, try one step on the right way. Try now on this day, and let it be the very advent to your soul of your Lord and Saviour. Try to work His work; try to remember His teaching, and say, "I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before Thee.'

The Life of Dr. Bushnell.*

HE majority of English students made their first acquaintance with Dr. Bushnell on the publication of his "Sermons for the New Life," and they at once felt in the volume the presence of an unwonted charm. The author

was evidently a man of independent and even original mind, endowed with the intuition of a seer and the heroism of an

"Life and Letters of Horace Bushnell." London: R. D. Dickinson.

apostle. He proved himself familiar alike with the ways of God and the needs of men, and his words glowed with the fervour which can only be gained by long and solitary communings with the Father of our spirits. The freshness, the raciness, the profound spirituality of these "Sermons for the New Life" would alone have given their author a high place among our theological writers, and have stamped him as one of the most remarkable men of the age. Nor was there anything in them which contravened the ordinary beliefs of the Evangelical Churches. They moved, indeed, on new lines, and occupied ground over which no other teacher had conducted us, but there was little in them suggestive of the preacher's heterodoxy, or calculated in any way to awaken suspicion. We have subsequently received from Dr. Bushnell several volumes of considerable worthnot one of which we could well spare; but our early attachment remains unshaken, and we regard his volume on "The New Life" as his greatest and best work.

Long before its appearance, however, he had exposed himself to the mistrust of his more orthodox brethren, and had undergone a severe and protracted trial for heresy. The controversy which, in England as well as in America, was afterwards provoked by his treatise on "The Vicarious Sacrifice," was simply a renewal of the agitation which followed his University Discourses on the Atonement, the Divinity of Christ, and Dogma and Spirit. The germ of all his latest speculations on this momentous theme may be found in these his earliest-publications. His theory of the Atonement was enlarged and completed. Bushnell's mind was continually meditating upon it and eager to receive fresh light; but, substantially, his views remained unchanged. The central element of his theory he never abandoned, though he subjected it to various modifications, and did something to bring it into more real and manifest harmony with the ordinary Evangelical faith. Whatever may be our opinion of the validity and worth of his theory, we cannot be insensible to the fact that he was in every way a remarkable man, a man of clear vigorous intellect, of transparent sincerity of purpose and inflexible integrity— pure, generous, and courageous. His very endeavour to effect a reconciliation between the Gospel and the strange complex forms of modern thought commands our respect; and now that we have before us these interesting "Memoirs," we see that the man was in every way better than his books. So beautiful a biography as

this we have not read for a long time. Apart from its peculiar Americanisms, for which of course we must be prepared, it is in almost every respect a model biography, and will take its place with the five or six best works of its class which this generation has produced. Its great merit is that it brings us into direct contact with the real life of the man. It is edited, and for the most part written, by his eldest daughter, who both understood and appreciated, revered and loved, her father. She is a woman of kindred soul with him, "without whose life she had not been "-as pure, as chivalrous, as devout; and while she has not lifted the veil from those sanctities of private and domestic life on which no stranger should look, she has enabled us clearly to see her father in the real greatness and simplicity of his character, as he appeared in his study, at his fireside, in the social circle, in the church, and among his townsmen. As the result of this biography, the memory of Horace Bushnell will be reverently and affectionately enshrined in the hearts of multitudes who never knew him.*

It is not our purpose to present anything like a full outline of Bushnell's career, still less to enter into a detailed criticism of his doctrines. We wish rather to mention a few points which will show the kind of man he was.

He was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, in 1802, and traced his descent through some of the earliest settlers of Saybrook and Guildford to the Huguenot refugees. His early home life was exceedingly beautiful, and he received through it that quiet and effective "Christian nurture" of which he subsequently wrote so eloquently. His parents were both endowed with more than ordinary mental power, and had an inborn gentleness and refinement which were of immeasurably greater value than the culture of the schools. In their home, religion was no occasional or unwelcome visitor, but a "constant atmosphere, a commanding but genial presence." To his mother-loving and unselfish, yet sagacious and prudent-he was especially indebted. Such a mother must have delighted in such a son. He has himself left us a picture of his early life, which we must do ourselves the pleasure of transcribing:

"The religion of the house was composite-that of the husband, in his rather Arminian type, received from his mother; and that of the wife, in the Episcopal,

• We wish to express our obligations to Mr. Dickinson for his beautiful edition of this noble "Life." He has issued it at a price-five shillings-which brings it within the reach of all classes. It is a marvel of cheapness.

from hers; and that of the Calvinistic Congregational Church, in which they were now both members, having early removed to this second place of residence, where they drop their Episcopal connection, and take their opportunities as they find them under the venerable, just now departing father of President Day. In this way, their first child had it always for his satisfaction, as far as he properly could, that he was Episcopally regenerated. I remember how, returning home, after second service, to his rather late dinner, my father would sometimes let the irritation of his hunger loose in harsher words than were complimentary, on the tough predestinationism or the rather over-total depravity of the sermon; whereupon he encountered always a begging-off look from the other end of the table, which, as I understood it, said, 'Not, for the sake of the children.' It was not the Calvinism that she cared for; but she wanted the preacher himself kept in respect for the benefit of the family. In which, unquestionably, she had the right of it. More than this, it was her nature that, lively and sharp as her excitabilities were, she could never help acting in the line of discretion. She was, in fact, the only person I have known in the close intimacy of years who never did an inconsiderate, imprudent, or any way excessive thing that required. to be afterwards mended. In this attribute of discretion she rose even to a kind of sublimity. I never knew her give advice that was not perfectly justified by results. Her religious duties and graces were also cast in this mood-not sinking their flavour in it, but having it raised to an element of superior, almost Divine, perception. Thus praying earnestly for and with her children, she was discreet enough never to make it unpleasant to them by too great frequency. She was a good talker, and was often spoken of as the best Bible teacher in the congregation; but she never fell into the mistake of trying to talk her children into religion. She spoke to them at fit times, but not nearly as frequently as many mothers do that are far less qualified. Whether it was meant or not, there was no atmosphere of artificially pious consciousness in the house. And yet she was preaching all the time by her maternal sacrifices for us, scarcely to be noted without tears." (Pp. 28, 29.)

Equally delightful is Dr. Bushnell's picture of the training he received in the school and the church, taken from his address on "The Age of Homespun" (pp. 10–14).

At the age of twenty-one he entered Yale College, but he did not during his collegiate course think of devoting himself to the Christian ministry. The law was his intended goal. After his graduation, he was for a time the working editor of the New York Journal of Commerce, then he became a tutor in his Alma Mater, and it was during his tutorship that there occurred a great revival, which proved for him the turning-point of his life. He was intellectually far ahead of all his colleagues-brilliant, popular, and with prospects at the bar which must have fired his ambition. But he was all at sea in respect to his religious beliefs, passing through severe conflicts,