Excerpt from The Spirit in Man: Sermons and Selections Horace Bushnell was born in 1802 and died in 1876. It is, therefore, now one hundred years since his birth, and twenty-six years since he left this world. It is, perhaps, not more remarkable that a personal influence which had its root in another century should be still growing and spreading, than that material of thought produced from thirty to sixty years ago should still have fitness to the thought of to-day, and show equal freshness and vitality. The papers offered in this collection are selected from those left in the care of his wife, and which have lain inert for more than thirty years, with the single exception as to time of that on "Inspiration," begun just a year before his death under conditions of feebleness best described by himself in his introduction to it. The title of the book is appropriated from one of his sermons in the volume of "Sermons for the New Life" (page 29), chosen because he once chose it, and because it covers the whole scope of the subjects included as well as any one title could do.
These sermons, it will appear, have never had the benefit of his revision. The needful work had to be done by another hand. Horace Bushnell was born in 1802 and died in 1876. It is, therefore, now one hundred years since his birth, and twenty-six years since he left this world. It is, perhaps, not more remarkable that a personal influence which had its root in another century should be still growing and spreading, than that material of thought produced from thirty to sixty years ago should still have fitness to the thought of to-day, and show equal freshness and vitality. The papers offered in this collection are selected from those left in the care of his wife, and which have lain inert for more than thirty years, with the single exception as to time of that on "Inspiration," begun just a year before his death under conditions of feebleness best described by himself in his introduction to it. The title of the book is appropriated from one of his sermons in the volume of "Sermons for the New Life" (page 29), chosen because he once chose it, and because it covers the whole scope of the subjects included as well as any one title could do.
These sermons, it will appear, have never had the benefit of his revision. The needful work had to be done by another hand.
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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