" I suggest again, as a matter closely related, the
very large, really sublime interest we should get in
persons, or souls, in distinction from subjects, by
putting the mind down carefully on the study or
due exploration of sin. I do not mean by this
any theologic exploration, such as we have reported
in our systems, no questioning about the origin, or
propagation, or totality, or disability, or immedic-
able guilt of sin, but a going into and through it
as it is, and the strange wild work it makes in the
intestine struggles and wars of the mind. For
it is a fact, I fear, that we sometimes very nearly
kill our natural interest in persons, by just boltiug
them down theologically into what we call death
and there making an end. We clap an extin-
guisher on them, in this manner, and they drop
out of interest, just where they become most inter-
esting, — where meaning, and size, and force, and



314 HORACE BUSHNELL

depth- of sorrow, and amount of life, and every-
thing fit to engage our concern is most impressively
revealed. Say no more of the dignity of human
nature ; here is something far beyond all that, — a
wild, strange flame raging inwardly in that nature,
that, for combinations of great feeling, and war,
and woe, is surpassed by no tragedy or epic, nor
by all tragedies and epics together. Here in the
soul's secret chambers are Fausts more subtle than
Faust, Hamlets more mysterious than Hamlet,
Lears more distracted and desolate than Lear;
wills that do what they allow not, and what they
would not do ; wars in the members ; bodies of
death to be carried, as in Paul ; wild horses of the
mind, governed by no rein, as in Plato ; subtleties
of cunning, plausibilities of seeming virtues, mem-
ories writ in letters of fire, great thoughts heaving
under the brimstone marl of revenges, pains of
wrong and of sympathy with suffering wrong, as-
pirations that have lost courage, hates, loves, beau-
tiful dreams, and tears ; — all these acting at cross-
purposes and representing, as it were to sight, the
broken order of the mind. 