which he
endeavoured to bring Calvinism into logical coherence and, in the
interest of sound reason, to correct St. Paul's willingness to be
accursed for the sake of his brethren. He graduated from Yale College in
1827. He taught there while studying law after 1829. He describes
himself at this period as sound in ethics and sceptical in religion, the
soundness of his morals being due to nature and training, the
scepticism, to the theology in which he was involved. His law studies
were complete, yet he turned to the ministry. He had been born on the
orthodox side of the great contention in which Channing was a leader of
the liberals in the days of which we speak. He never saw any reason to
change this relation. His clerical colleagues, for half a life-time,
sought to change it for him. In 1833 he was ordained and installed as
minister of the North Church in Hartford, a pastorate which he never
left. The process of disintegration of the orthodox body was continuing.
There was almost as much rancour between the old and the new orthodoxy
as between orthodox and Unitarians themselves. Almost before his career
was well begun an incurable disease fastened itself upon him. Not much
later, all the severity of theological strife befell him. Between these
two we have to think of him doing his work and keeping his sense of
humour.

His earliest book of consequence was on _Christian Nurture_, published
in 1846. Consistent Calvinism presupposes in its converts mature years.
Even an adult must pass through waters deep for him. He is not a sinful
child of the Father. He is a being totally depraved and damned to
everlasting punishment. God becomes his Father only after he is
redeemed. The revivalists' theory Bushnell bitterly opposed. It made of
religion a transcendental matter which belonged on the outside of life,
a kind of miraculous epidemic. He repudiated the prevailing
individualism. He anticipated much that is now being said concerning
heredity, environment and subconsciousness. He revived the sense of the
Church in which Puritanism had been so sadly lacking. The book is a
classic, one of the rich treasures which the nineteenth century offers
to the twentieth.

Bushnell, so far as one can judge, had no knowledge of Kant. He is,
nevertheless, dealing with Kant's own problem, of the theory of
knowledge, in his rather diffuse 'Dissertation on Language,' which is
prefixed to the volume which bears the title _God in Christ_, 1849.