Excerpt from Moral Uses of Dark Things
Of the three volumes by Dr. Bushnell now produced under the general title of "Literary Varieties" two have long been out of print and one is new. The latter consists of various articles and addresses which have been printed in some fugitive form, and which Dr. Bushnell himself designated under the heading of Reliquiae as the material for a book to be published after his death. Collecting them now as a nearly complete edition of his miscellaneous writings, we would emphasize the distinction between these and his theological works, these "the spontaneous overplus and literary byplay of a laborious profession," the latter the embodiment of that profession itself. They so richly represent and, as it were, personify the varied interests of his life as to form in themselves, if rightly interpreted, a biography necessary to the completeness of any which has been or could be written. As an aid to such interpretation, a few facts and thoughts may here be fitly presented.
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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