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.
