We dined at Dr. Bushnell's house. The Doctor is a very unassuming man,
and a very original but somewhat eccentric thinker. He had lately
published a sermon on Roads, a sermon on the Moral Uses of the Sea, a
sermon on Stormy Sabbaths, and a sermon on Unconscious Influence,--all
treated in a very striking manner. He had recently visited England and
the continent of Europe, and had also contributed an article to the
_New Englander_, a quarterly review, on the Evangelical Alliance. The
views of a keen thinker from another land on that and kindred topics
deserve to be pondered. "The Church of God in England," says the
Doctor, "can never be settled upon any proper basis, whether of truth
or of practical harmony, until the Established Church, as such, is
separated from the State." His estimate of "a large class of English
Christians" is not very flattering. "They are good men, but not
thinking men. Their piety gurgles in a warm flood through their heart,
but it has not yet mounted to their head. * * * In the ordinary, _i.e._
in their preaching and piety, they show a style of goodishness fitly
represented by Henry's Commentary; in the extraordinary, they rise into
sublimity by inflation and the swell of the occasion." Towards slavery
and slaveholders he manifests a tenderness of feeling at which we are
surprised and pained. The proposed exclusion of slaveholders from the
Alliance he characterizes as "absurd and fanatical," speaking of the
subject as having been "so unhandsomely forced upon" the American
brethren in London. Again, "There is too much good sense among the
Christians of this country (America) to think of constituting an
Alliance on the basis which denies Christian character to all
slaveholders. At a future time, when slavery has been discussed long
enough, we shall do so. We cannot do it now,--least of all can we do it
at the dictation of brethren beyond the sea, who do not understand the
question," &c.