It is only in the parts which the women fill, that we are sensible of aught that is unpleasant. They do not rise to the dignity of their character. Their voices are high and harsh, and their gestures ungraceful, but it is but a slight blot upon a pieture otherwise so perfect.

The character of Caiaphas, the high-priest, is most capitally taken by Johann Lang, the burgomeister of the village, a man whose dignity and strong character are well adapted to the part. It is to his executive ability that the visitors at OberAmmergau owe so much of their comfort.

While we have thus spoken of this drama, it has slowly advanced to its sad termination. The chorus have woven together the tableaux and the story, and the large audience have breathlessly watched the development of both. In and out of the audience-room, over the heads of the spectators, the birds have flitted, the clouds have cast their shadows, and before the stage two butterflies, the symbols of immortality, have slowly back and forth winged their unsteady flight, while six thousand spectators have watched the story of a peasant of Galilee, as told by the peasant of Ober-Ammergau. It is nearly over now. The chorus robed in black enter again, and, their sad song finished, the curtain rises upon the scene of the crucifixion.

Christ is already nailed upon the cross, and near him stand the brutal Roman soldiers, ready to cast lots for his garments. It is all so real, so true to life, that we avert our eyes, while with every detail the scene upon Calvary is reënacted, and when the "It is finished" is heard, and with a slight shudder the head has dropped upon the breast, it is difficult to realize that we have not been at the foot of the cross upon Calvary, eighteen hundred years ago.

With infinite tenderness the relations proceed to their sad task, and when the body of Christ is ready for its burial, we leave the theater and wander out among the fields where the daisies bloom in God's sun-light, as they have done through all the centuries, and feel more sure of the truth of this faith which thus out of the mouth of simple peasants has been again revealed to us.

ARTICLE V.-HORACE BUSHNELL.

Life and Letters of Horace Bushnell. New York: Harper & Brothers.

THIS volume meets a long and deep felt and widely experienced want. The name of Horace Bushnell is one of the great names of modern theological literature, and one destined to become still greater and more widely honored as his quickening thought penetrates more deeply the thought and theology of the age. To some this name is, or has been, one of reproach and heresy, cast out as evil, as that of all good and great reformers has been, -as that of the divine Master and of his first disciples were,-the disturber of the churches, and the great antagonist of orthodoxy. To many it is that of a brilliant but erratic genius, of unsurpassed intellectual force and acumen, a thoughtful and eloquent preacher, a fresh and original writer, whose words have a wondrously vital and quickening power, beyond all rhetoric to explain,—a deep feeling and poetic soul, who if he had not been a theologian would have been a poet, and who carried the imaginings and fancies of poetry into the realm of religious truth, mistaking often, his own visions and poetic conceptions for divine revelations and the truth of God.

To a few, and a continually increasing number, he is no mere heretic, or poetic dreamer, and not simply a writer of genius and an eloquent divine, but a great religious teacher and reformer, a true prophet and interpreter of the ways of God, one of the few raised up and inspired of God to enlarge the boundaries of truth by discovering and exploring new continents in the world of revelation; as Columbus enlarged those of geography, and Copernicus and Newton of science, and Augustine, and Luther, and Edwards of theology, which discoveries necessarily displaced and reconstructed the old boundaries of knowledge.

We are aware that to those who hold the assumption that all religious truth and doctrine is immutably fixed by the

decrees and creeds of councils, such a claim must seem prepos terous; but not to those who hold with John Robinson that "God hath more truth yet to break forth out of His holy word," beyond what Luther and Calvin taught; or with that other puritan, John Milton, that inspiration is a gift still to be sought and obtained "by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim, with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases." That this prophetic gift, the illumination of the Spirit to discern, and the power of utterance to declare divine truth, was vouchsafed to Horace Bushnell, if to any in modern times, no thoughtful and unprejudiced reader of this memoir will be disposed to question. He will here see by what divine methods of inward leading and outward discipline this great and good man was led to be what he was, and to hold and teach just those views of truth and Christian doctrine which he did. He will see the close and vital connection between his religious experience, the inward spiritual knowledge of God attained by prayer and devout meditation and a close and holy walk with God, and those doctrines which have given so much offence to the mere theologian; a connection as close and legitimate, we venture to affirm, as the theology of Paul held to the revelation of the Son of God within him, or as the profound and mystical utterances of John held to his more intimate and spiritual knowledge of Jesus on whose bosom he leaned. Here, too, he will see the reason of that profound admiration and love which his friends felt and still feel towards him; which is not wholly accounted for by the subtle magnetism with which every man of true genius attracts and holds other minds; which can only be explained by the presence of that quality which held the disciples of Socrates to their teacher, and was seen in its supreme measure in the reverent affection with which the eleven disciples clung to their great Master. For it is not necessary to suppose that any dogmatic belief in his divinity held them to his person, at least in their earlier intercourse-this might rather have repelled them in awe;-but superior wisdom and spiritual force mingled with pure goodness and greatness of soul, is of

itself a divine quality which inevitably either attracts and holds men, if they believe in it and have intellectual and moral sympathy with it, or repels them if they have not; makes the most devoted of friends or the bitterest of enemies.

The revelation here made of Dr. Bushnell's inward life and character, unlike many so-called great men of the literary sort, so far from discounting our impression of his greatness or his genius, adds immeasurably to its depth and power, by disclosing the genuineness of its quality. We see that there was nothing artificial or strained or hollow within, below the surface of the man or behind his outward life, but that he was through and through the same original, unique, outgoing power; a genius absolutely without an equal in its combined intellectual, spiritual and practical energy; an earnest, sincere, and great soul, simple and tender as a child in his feelings, open and fearless as the daylight in the expression of his real thought, and withal as playful in the delicacy of its artistic touch and coloring; as much a hero to his domestics and children as to his outmost admirers, and even more great and admirable because they saw and felt more of the real man.

Of the execution of this memoir we wish to speak a word before coming to its contents. It is the work chiefly of a daughter of Dr. Bushnell, Mrs. Mary Bushnell Cheney, aided by a few others most competent to assist in so important and sacred a task. Besides the able contribution of Dr. Leonard Bacon reviewing the Bushnell controversy, originally prepared for this memoir and afterward published in the New Englander for September, 1879, interesting reminiscences are furnished by the Rev. Dr. Bartol, bis intimate and life-long friend, and by Bishop Clark, formerly rector of Christ Church, Hartford, also by others who knew him in his earlier days. The Rev. Dr. E. P. Parker of Hartford contributes a chapter of great interest and value covering the period of his "ministry at large," from 1861 to 1870. And the story of the closing years of his life is graphically and beautifully told by his eldest daughter, Miss Frances Louisa Bushnell. Rich materials are also furnished by the many letters, journals, and published writings of Dr. Bushnell, extracts from which are given so far as they help to unfold or illustrate the character and genius of this won

derful man. A " Fragment of Autobiography, found dimly penciled on a stray sheet of paper," entitled "God's Way with a Soul," and evidently written in the later period of his life, fitly introduces the daughter's biography. Written in the author's peculiarly fresh and racy style, with the added spiritual flavor and holy tenderness of a soul nearing its heavenly port and looking back over the way in which God has led him, it is a rare and precious document, and awakens an infinite regret that he did not live to complete it, as well as that other late begun and unfinished treatise on Inspiration.

This beautiful "Fragment" is so characteristic, and strikes so truly and strongly the tone of the author's mind and character, and so the key-note of his biography, that we cannot forbear quoting it:

"I have been told that my arrival or advent in this earthly sphere was on the 14th of April, 1802. I have no recollection of any other state from which I came, and have no reason to judge that I came from any other state at all. I suppose that I was not made, but generated, being the son of one soul which was the son of another, which was the son of God. But these parent souls out of which I came I do not remember as having been conversant with their substance. I have only heard of some of them by report. Indeed, I came, as I suppose, scarcely knowing myself. and having it for a great part of my errand here to find, get a knowledge of, and so get full possession of, myself. For I was only a tender rubicund mollusk of a creature at the time when I came out in this rough battle with winds, winters, and wickedness; and so far from being able to take care of myself, I was only a little and confusedly conscious of myself, or that I was anybody; and when I broke into this little, confused consciousness, it was with a cry-such a dismal figure did I make to myself; or perchance it was something prophetic, without inspiration, a foreshadow dim and terrible, of the great battle of woe and sin I was sent hither to fight. But my God and my good mother both heard the cry and went to the task of strengthening and comforting me together, and were able ere long to get a smile upon my face. My mother's loving instinct was from God, and God was in love to me first therefore; which love was deeper than hers, and more protracted. Long years ago she vanished, but God stays by me still, embracing me in my gray hairs as tenderly and carefully as she did in my infancy, and giving to me as my joy and the principal glory of my life that he lets me know him, and helps me with real confidence to call him my Father. Would that I could simply tell his method with me and show its significance.

"My figure in this world has not been great, but I have had a great experience. I have never been a great agitator, never pulled a wire to get the will of men. never did a politic thing. It was not for this reason, but because I was looked upon as a singularity—not exactly sane, perhaps, in many things—that I was almost never a president or vice-president of any society, and almost never ou a