the parable hides the thought until you think it out.

Dr. Bushnell's theory did not blind the ordinary reader. No writer is
more easily apprehended by the average mind if he has any sympathy with
the subjects treated; but it was an inconvenient thing for his
theological neighbors to manage. While they insisted on "the evident
meaning of the words,"--a mischievous phrase,--he was breathing his
meaning into attentive souls by the spirit which he had contrived to
hide within his words. It is a way that genius has,--as Abt Vogler
says:--

"But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear:
The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians know."

The first thing that brought Dr. Bushnell out of the world of theology
into the world of literature was his oration before the Phi Beta Kappa
Society at Harvard College in 1848. He had achieved a reputation as a
preacher of remarkable insight for such as had ears to hear, and he was
already in the thick of theological controversy; but his fine power of
expression and breadth of thought had not been specially noticed. This
oration introduced him into the world of letters. Mr. J. T. Fields--the
most discerning critic of the day--said to the writer that the oration
was heard with surprise and delight, and that it gave the speaker an
assured place in the ranks of literature. That he should have been so
readily welcomed by the literary guild is not strange, for the title of
his oration--'Work and Play'--led the way into a discussion of the
secret that underlies all works of genius. For once, the possessor of
the divine gift heard its secret revealed and himself explained to
himself; his work was set before him as the full play of his spirit.
Beginning with nature, where our author always began, and finding there
a free and sportive element, he carries it into human life; making the
contention that its aim should be, and that its destiny will be, to free
itself from the constraint of mere work and rise into that natural
action of the faculties which may be called _play_--a moral and
spiritual process. His conclusion is that--

"if the world were free,--free, I mean, of themselves; brought
up, all, out of work into the pure inspiration of truth and
charity,--new forms of personal and intellectual beauty would
appear, and society itself reveal the Orphic movement. No more
will it be imagined that poetry and rhythm are accidents or
figments of the rac