success. Evil is not "good in the making." The devil, who is "the father of lies," is not, therefore, the grandfather of truth. (3) Specious uniformity. The precision of parabolic language, even in allusion to minor details, is observable in the explanation given of what befell the seed falling upon rocky ground. It "sprang up quickly because it had no deepness of earth." The fact of such rapid springing up was obvious to any observer, but its correct explanation was then not so. We now know that the rocky substratum, catching and reflecting the sun rays, cradled the young growth in peculiar warmth, and so hastened its advance. The further remark that it was when the "sun was risen" that the feebly rooted plants "withered away" is equally accurate and full of suggestiveness. The "rising" so referred to must needs be its seasonal climb toward the summer solstice, for the rooting could not occur in a single day. When the sun rides high in summer its thermal ray overmatches the luminous, as that had already displaced the actinic ray of spring. James, in his Epistle, refers to this as bringing "burning heat." By this marvelous change in mode of energy displayed the sun adjusts itself continuously to the advancing needs of plant life; but the change from the mild actinic ray, which nurtures all life in its incipient stages, to the fiercer thermal ray, which also brings healthful ripening to the plant in good soil, ministers death to the tenant of the shallow, rock-bottomed tract. This subtle change in the apparently uniform emission of solar force may well remind us of the illogical nature of the processes by which we may bring ourselves to speak of the "uniformity of nature," and build ponderous and fallacious theories thereon. (4) Seeming self-sufficiency of nature. Lucretius persuaded himself, a long time ago, that "nature can do all things, without the help of the gods." "Natural selection" has been sometimes theoretically endowed with like semidivine independence of efficiency. But in this parable we are reminded that the soil which fosters the seed does not create it, and that the seed, being created, can normally reach the soil only by being sown. Observe that, instead of using the familiar and direct designation of the seed (siton or sperma), our Lord, in his explanation of the parable, resorts to a periphrastic form of expression-"that which is sown."

This might be dismissed as accidental, but for the uniform abstention throughout the parable, from the ordinary term, and the unusual character of the roundabout phrase substituted. This is the more suggestive because of the fact that the cereals are in a peculiar sense "that which is sown." Grass grows by the root, and is self-protecting and self-propagating. But the cereal is uniquely dependent on the ministry of man. The geologic record shows it to have been twin-born with him, and that it came into existence full-formed, without traceable antecedents. It has never been found wild, as Decandolle assures us, and when left to itself it does not degenerate as other plants do, but disappears. It is also peculiarly perishable when gathered. MacMillan says, "It is not probable that there was ever a year and a half's supply of bread at one time in the world," and "The human race comes every year within a month of starvation." Cereal life is also singularly helpless and unhelped except by man. It is not self-fertilizing. It is not aided at this point by birds or insects, as many other organisms are. Its delicate pollen must be scattered indiscriminately by the wind, and is always in danger of being destroyed by violent blasts or drenching rains. It is the victim of myriads of insects, as well as of rust and mildew. It is plain, then, that the cereal is neither a product nor a favorite of "natural selection." It never originates, and cannot survive, apart from man. His prescient care must prepare the soil and scatter it, and his hand must gather and preserve it for future sowing, or it would perish outright. It illustrates in unimpeachable fashion the incapacity of nature alone mechanically to meet all the needs of vital organisms. (5) The mystery of waste. Of the six tracts here described as sown only one made full return. Of the remainder two were partially and three wholly unresponsive. Was the bulk of the seed therefore wasted? Here we come upon a perennial stumbling-block of cosmic theorists. Nature seems to destroy as ruthlessly as it creates lavishly. Yet the word "waste" is, in fact, a malleable and delusive one. The highway was infertile, yet it was indispensable. The rock was good to build upon, although unfit to sow upon. Even the thorns might be wrought into a serviceable hedge. The objectionable and obstructive, from one point of view, may be usable and even neces

sary from another. No one but the general, who has the whole field of battle in view, can decide on the wisdom of a single comThe "sower" who here "went forth to sow" pany movement. furnishes light thereby on the problem. The wheat he holds in his hand is essential to his life. If it be wholly lost, no wit of man can replace it by manipulation of the grasses; no chemist can find a substitute for it as a vehicle of life. Of it he may justly say, "Teneo et teneor," for he holds it in life by sowing, and it, in turn, holds him in life by the harvest it returns. But being a creature of appetite, and knowing that it is good for food, why does he not eat it, as the horse would? Being an observing creature, and seeing that the seed in the furrow will dissolve and disappear, why does he commit it to such a fate? Or if, being also "a creature of large discourse, looking before and after," he perceives that seeming dissolution is not real, but the way to a new and increased life, he must also see that there are formidable difficulties in the way. Beyond his hand, it is beyond his reach. It must be left to the mercy of mechanical and incalculable forces, with grave uncertainty as to result. Why, then, should he exchange the secure for the problematic? Or, again, he knows that the seed must have fit soil, for he "goes forth" to find it. He knows that in sowing some must be scattered on the wayside, some on rocky ground, and some among thorns. Why, then, does he not drop it patiently, seed by seed, in fruitful furrows, rather than entail foreseen and reckless waste by sowing broadcast? The future crop may be uncertain if the seed be trusted to wind and weather, but it is impossible else. The waste of time in planting, seed by seed, would far outweigh the waste of seed in scattering. And, from the birds' point of view, the wayside seed would not be wasted. "There is that scattereth and yet increaseth." The "sower" still deliberately goes forth to sow, and the judgment of the ages is that he commits no waste.

83 Momas

ART. II.-HORACE BUSHNELL AND "THE VICARIOUS

SACRIFICE"

I. BUSHNELL was born in Connecticut in 1802. He died in 1876. He was reared in the Congregational Church, but his mother had been a member of the Episcopal Church, and his father had learned Arminian views from his mother and objected to the rigid Calvinism delivered where he lived. So religiously varied currents met in Horace Bushnell. His father had two occupations-conducting a factory and a farm. Bushnell worked in connection with both. His heredity and environment seemed to combine to preclude narrowness and provincialism. Diversity came in upon him in life and thought. His mother was a woman by whom duty was made authoritative without being hateful, and who made religion felt as a reality without making it a constant topic of conversation. The home was a New England home and more; and in a sense it was prophetic of Bushnell, who was to be a New England man, and far more than that. Conscience, and a practical relation to life, with a compelling conviction in the things of religion, are three New England characteristics. These things were true, but not the distinctive, characteristics of Bushnell. The deep vein of mysticism and the versatility of his thought and life, in combination with the other qualities, made Bushnell what he was. At twenty-one he entered Yale College. After a course where he was felt as a leader he graduated. Then he studied law and became a tutor in the college. He had been religious as a boy, but a skeptical period came and an intense revival movement in the college found him intellectually unsympathetic. A group of young men who admired him stood aloof from the movement. This was more than Bushnell could bear. He listened to the demands of his conscience and his heart and opened himself to the revival influences. How his doubts were dealt with may be seen. in his own words. Speaking of the Trinity he said: “I am glad I have a heart as well as a head. My heart wants the Father, my heart wants the Son, my heart wants the Holy Ghost-and one

just as much as the other." It was the appeal to experience which was to underlie much of his thinking and life. He entered the divinity school and in 1833 was invited to become pastor of the North Church in Hartford, Connecticut, where all his active ministerial life was spent. His pastorate entered into the very life of Hartford. The park bearing his name is one evidence of how deeply he impressed the city. His influence entered into the fiber of the manhood of the city, inspired it in educational ideals and even in commercial activity. He became Hartford's first citizen. After hearing him on Sunday, we are told, men would say: "I've heard a great sermon and I'm going to make my week mean something!" His relation to his own church is suggested by the unity with which it stood by him through the fierce theological controversies which raged about him, finally withdrawing from the Concession to protect him and express its loyalty to him. When his divergence from opinions almost universally held became understood the attack began which continued a running fire for years. Vain attempts were made again and again to bring him to trial. The Congregational polity was in his favor. Besides, Bushnell was not the sort of man to try for heresy; there was such a massive Christian quality about him that New England common sense held the heresy-hunters in check. He was interested in everything. He planned roads, could not pass over a stream without calculating its water power, had a passion for nature, organized a musical society when at Yale, was practical, poetic, virile, alive to the finger tips. Through all this versatile life the ring of conscience sounds clear, and under it there heaved the great tidal movement of a deep personal religious life. He was forever original. Though a reader, he was not in any technical sense a scholar. There was too much going on inside his own mind for that. He kept problems hanging on pegs, as he said, until he could get to them. Such eagerness and such vitality were his that to the last he was planning new and large enterprises of thought. If he were still alive, he would be publishing a book this year to startle men out of intellectual sluggishness, partly agreeing with the spirit of the time, as easily disagreeing with it; moving with an almost airy freedom from earth's control, but with a very