It is a popular impression of Dr. Bushnell that he was the subject of his imagination, and that it ran away with him in the treatment of themes which required only severe thought: the impression is a double mistake: theology does not call for severe thought, alone nor mainly; but first and chiefly for the imagination, and the seeing and interpreting eye that usually goes with it; its object is to find spirit under form, to discover what the _logos_ expresses. For this the imagination is the chief requisite. It is not a vagrant and irresponsible faculty, but an inner eye whose vision is to be trusted like that of the outer; it has in itself the quality of thought, and is not a mere picture-making gift. Dr. Bushnell trained his imagination to work on certain definite lines, and for a definite end--namely, to bring out the spiritual meaning hidden within the external form. He worked in the spirit of Coleridge's words:-- "I had found That outward forms the loftiest, still receive Their finer influence from the Life within." No analysis or recapitulation of his works can be given in these preliminary words. Perhaps his most influential book is the first, 'Christian Nurture'; while a treatise for the household, it was surcharged with theological opinions which proved to be revolutionary and epoch-making. 'The Vicarious Sacrifice' has most affected the pulpit. 'Nature and the Supernatural,' the tenth chapter of which has become a classic, has done great service in driving out the extreme dualism that invested the subject of God's relation to creation. His ablest essay is the treatise on Language; the most literary is that on 'Work and Play'; the most penetrating in its insight is 'Our Gospel a Gift to the Imagination'; the most personal and characteristic is 'The Age of Homespun.' His best sermon is always the one last read; and they are perhaps his most representative work. The sermon is not usually ranked as belonging to literature, but no canon excludes those preached by this great man. They are timeless in their truth, majestic in their diction, commanding in their moral tone, penetrating in their spirituality, and pervaded by that quality without which a sermon is not one--the divine uttering itself to the human. There is no striving and crying in the streets, no heckling of saints nor dooming of sinners, no petty debates over details of conduct, no dogmatic assumption, no logical insistence, but only the gentle and mighty persuasions of truth, coming as if breathed by the very spirit of God. Language was to him "the sanctuary of thought," and these sermons are the uttered worship in that temple where reason and devotion are one. [Illustration: Signature: T. T. Munger] WORK AND PLAY From 'Work and Play'