Horace Bushnell
1802 - 1876

      Horace Bushnell was an American Congregational clergyman and theologian. Bushnell was a Yankee born in the village of Bantam, township of Litchfield, Connecticut.

      He graduated at Yale in 1827, was literary editor of the New York Journal of Commerce from 1828–1829, and in 1829 became a tutor at Yale. Here he initially studied law, but in 1831 he entered the theology department of Yale College.

      In May, 1833 Bushnell was ordained pastor of the North Congregational church in Hartford, Connecticut, where he remained until 1859, when due to extended poor health he resigned his pastorate. Thereafter he held no appointed office, but, until his death at Hartford in 1876, he was a prolific author and occasionally preached.
      

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1.) Christ and the Salvation 1 - CHRIST WAITING TO FIND ROOM.
      "And she brought forth her first-born son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn."-Luke ii. 7. In the birth and birthplace of Jesus, there is something beautifully correspondent with his personal fortunes afterward, and also of the fortunes of his gospel, even down to our ow ...read more

2.) Christ and the Salvation 2 - THE GENTLENESS OF GOD.
      "Thy gentleness hath made me great."-Ps. xviii. 35. Gentleness in a deity-what other religion ever took up such a thought? When the coarse mind of sin makes up gods and a religion by its own natural light, the gods, it will be seen, reveal both the coarseness and the sin together, as they properly should. They are made great as being great in fo ...read more

3.) Christ and the Salvation 3 - THE INSIGHT OF LOVE.
      "She hath done what she could; she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying."-Mark, xiv. 8. It takes a woman disciple after all to do any most beautiful thing; in certain respects too, or as far as love is wisdom, any wisest thing. Thus we have before us, here, a simple-hearted loving woman, who has had no subtle questions of criticism ...read more

4.) Christ and the Salvation 4 - SALVATION FOR THE LOST CONDITION.
      "For the Son of Man is come to save that which was lost."-Math. xviii. 11. Every kind of work supposes something to be done, some ground or condition of fact to be affected by it; education the fact of ignorance, punishment the fact of crime, charity the fact of want. The work of Christ, commonly called a work of salvation, supposes in like mann ...read more

5.) Christ and the Salvation 5 - THE FASTING AND TEMPTATION OF JESUS.
      "Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungered."-Math. iv. 1-2. I think I do not mistake, when I assume that this particular chapter of the gospel history, commonly called the temptation, is just the one that a good many theolog ...read more

6.) Christ and the Salvation 6 - CONVICTION OF SIN BY THE CROSS.
      "Of sin, because they believe not on me. Of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye see me no more. Of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged."-John, xvi. 9-11. In the convincement of sin, the Holy Spirit is to be the agent, and Christ rejected the argument-so Christ himself conceives the promise of the Spirit which he is ...read more

7.) Christ and the Salvation 7 - CHRIST ASLEEP.
      "And behold there arose a great tempest in the sea, insomuch that the ship was covered with the waves: but he was asleep."-Matt., viii. 24. Christ asleep-the eternal Word of the Father, incarnate, lapped in the soft oblivion of unconsciousness-a very strange fact, when deeply enough pondered to reveal its significant and even singular implicatio ...read more

8.) Christ and the Salvation 8 - CHRISTIAN ABILITY.
      "Behold also the ships, which though they be so great, and are driven of fierce winds, yet are they turned about with a very small helm, whithersoever the governor listeth." James iii. 4. The ships that were "so great" in former days, were, in fact, scarcely more than cock-boats, or small coasters, scraping round the shores of the inland seas; w ...read more

9.) Christ and the Salvation 9 - INTEGRITY AND GRACE.
      "Judge me O Lord according to my righteousness, and according to mine integrity that is in me."-Ps. vii, 8. A truly noble confidence!-and yet many of our time would call the language very dangerous, or scarcely Christian, language, if it were spoken by any but one of the scripture saints. What can be a slipperier footing, they would say, for any ...read more

10.) Christ and the Salvation 10 - LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE.
      "As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they can not fast. But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days."-Mark ii, 19. It is one of the honorable distinctions of Christ's doctrine that he is never one-sided; never taken, as men are, with a half-view of a subject, or a h ...read more

11.) Christ and the Salvation 11 - CHRIST'S AGONY, OR MORAL SUFFERING.
      "And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was, as it were, great drops of blood falling down to the ground."-Luke xxii, 44. What Christian has not many times wished that he could lay hold of the precise condition and feeling of Jesus, in this very remarkable scene or chapter, commonly called his agony? And yet a suspicion ma ...read more

12.) Christ and the Salvation 12 - THE PHYSICAL SUFFERING, OR CROSS OF CHRIST.
      For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.-Heb. ii, 10. It is a fact worthy of distinct notice, that our apostle is here making answer to the very same question that Anselm propounded for settlement, a thousand years ...read more

13.) Christ and the Salvation 13 - SALVATION BY MAN.
      For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection from the dead.-1. Cor. xv. 21. It can not, of course, be the apostle's meaning, that mankind are going literally to raise themselves from the dead. When he says "by man," he mentally refers to Christ; only taking advantage of the fact that, since Christ the Son of God incarnate, is b ...read more

14.) Christ and the Salvation 14 - THE BAD CONSCIOUSNESS TAKEN AWAY.
      "Because that the worshipers, once purged, should have had no more conscience of sins."-Heb. x, 2. The reading is not, you observe, "conscience of no more sins,"-as if the sins were stopped, but "no more conscience of sins,"-as if the conscience of sins already past were somehow extirpated, or else the sins taken quite away from it and forever e ...read more

15.) Christ and the Salvation 15 - THE BAD MIND MAKES A BAD ELEMENT.
      "Then answered the Jews and said unto him-say we not well, that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil?"-John viii, 48. It is often remarked as a curious, half ludicrous distinction of insane persons, that they look on others round them as being out of their head. And yet this kind of phenomenon is more or less observable, in all cases of diseas ...read more

16.) Christ and the Salvation 16 - PRESENT RELATIONS OF CHRIST WITH HIS FOLLOWERS.
      "Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away and come again unto you."-John xiv, 28. To go away and come again, or to go away in order to come again, would seem, taking the words -at their face, to be a rather idle or unmeaning operation; but if we can get far enough into the mind of Christ to apprehend his real meaning, we shall find that he i ...read more

17.) Christ and the Salvation 17 - THE WRATH OF THE LAMB.
      "And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?"-Rev. vi, 16-17. The lamb is the most simply innocent of all animals. Historically also it had become a name for sacrifice. For this ...read more

18.) Christ and the Salvation 18 - CHRISTIAN FORGIVENESS.
      "Forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you."-Eph. iv, 32. Under these words, "even as," and the relation or comparison they introduce, a very serious and high truth is presented; viz., that our human or Christian forgivenesses are to correspond with the forgiveness of sins by Christ himself; to be cast in the same mo ...read more

19.) Christ and the Salvation 19 - CHRIST BEARING THE SINS OF TRANSGRESSORS.
      "So Christ. was once offered to bear the sins of many."-Heb. ix, 28. Christ bearing our sins ought to be the tenderest and most soul-subduing of all facts conceivable. And yet it may even be made quite revolting, by the over literal, and legally hard, face put upon it. Perhaps I ought to say that it too often is, and that what is given to be the ...read more