Bushnell was preeminently a preacher. When he preached his first sermon, someone said: "There is more where that came from." He was outstanding as a preacher from the very beginning of his ministry. Here is a description of his preaching in his early days, "His preaching had a fiery quality, an urgency and willful force, which, in his later style is still felt in the more subdued glow of poetic imagery. There was a nervous insistence about his person, and a peculiar emphasizing swing of his right arm from the shoulder, which no one who had ever heard him is likely to forget. It seemed as if, with this gesture, he swung himself into his subject, and would fain carry others along with him. His sermons were always written out in full and read; never extemporized, never memorized. For the latter method and its results he had no liking. For the former, not sufficient confidence, though that came to him later, when driven to extempore work by ill-health."2
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The criticisms he received of his preaching were two: "one, that I preach too long sermons, which is sometimes true, and the other that I preach Christ too much, which I cannot think a fault to be repented of."
His voice had good carrying power but was not notable for strength or richness. He lacked the oratorical training that did so much for Beecher. His was a conversational style. It lacked the passion and pathos and flashing wit of the Brooklyn preacher. He was chained to his manuscript and had to stand in one spot. The manliness and courage of the man were obvious in every tone of his voice and in his movement and attitude. His effectiveness as a preacher was much less dependent on his physical personality than that of his contemporaries. "The sincerity of the word was matched by the quiet confidence of his bearing and the poetry of his diction was sustained by the music of his voice."3
Bushnell was a pastoral preacher rather than an evangelistic preacher. His preaching was for edification rather than conversion. There is creative power and personal experience in all his sermons.
The honesty which he brought to his task, the earnest study which he devoted to it, the dedication to his convictions, bore fruit in profound sermons. William Warren Sweet remarks that "it is not an exaggeration to say that the best preaching in America during the last half of the nineteenth century largely came from Horace Bushnell who was a prophet rather than a theologian." His great contribution was to restore the Christ of the Gospels and to lift Him up as a living and appealing personality.
1. Mary Bushnell Cheney, Life and Letters of Horace Bushnell, p. 65.
2. Theodore T. Munger, Horace Bushnell, Preacher and Theologian, p. 276.
3. Op. cit., p. 279.