Bushnell's preaching was affected by national events--the struggle over slavery and the theological controversies that swirled about the nation were major influences--and by personal events. One personal crisis that proved a significant influence was the death of Bushnell's five-year-old son. A new quality of compassion entered his preaching following this tragic experience.

Bushnell's health problems finally led to his resignation as pastor in 1859. He became something of a minister-at-large, traveling and preaching until his death in 1876. The excerpts which follow provide a taste of the preaching of one of the nineteenth-century's most gifted pulpiteers.

1 20 Centuries of Great Preaching, edited by Clyde Fant and William Pinson, Vol. 4, p. 51.

from "Unconscious Influence"

The Bible calls the good man's life a light, and it is the nature of light to flow out spontaneously in all directions, and fill the world unconsciously with its beams. So the Christian shines, it would say, not so much because he will, as because he is a luminous object.

Not that the active influence of Christians is made of no account in the figure, but only that this symbol of light has its propriety in the fact that their unconscious influence is the chief influence, and has the precedence in its power over the world.

And yet, there are many who will be ready to think that light is a very tame and feeble instrument, because it is noiseless. An earthquake, for example, is to them a much more vigorous and effective agency. Hear how it comes thundering through solid foundations of nature. It rocks a whole continent. The noblest works of man--cities, monuments, and temples--are in a moment leveled to the ground, or swallowed down in the opening gulfs of fire.

Little do they think that the light of every morning, the soft, and genial, and silent light, is an agent many times more powerful. But let the light of the morning cease and return no more, let the hour of morning come, and bring with it now dawn; the outcries of a horror-stricken world fill the air, and make, as it were, the darkness audible.

The beasts go wild and frantic at the loss of the sun. The vegetable growths turn pale and fie. A chill creeps on, and frosty winds begin to howl across the freezing earth. Colder, and yet colder, is the night. The vital blood, at length, of all creatures, stops congealed. Down goes the frost toward the earth's center. The heart of the sea is frozen; nay, the earthquakes are themselves frozen in, under their fiery caverns. The very globe itself, too, and all the fellow planets that have lost their sun, are become mere balls of ice, swinging silent in the darkness.

Such is the light, which revisits us in the silence of the morning. It makes no shock or scar. It would not wake an infant in his cradle. And yet it perpetually new creates the world, rescuing it each morning, as a prey, from night and chaos. So the Christian is a light, even "the light of the world."