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=_Horace Bushnell, 1804-_= (Manual, p, 480.)

From the “Sermons for the New Life.”

=_43._= 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, end 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 the solid foundations of nature.  It rocks a whole continent.  The noblest works of man—­cities, monuments, and temples—­are in a moment levelled to the ground or swallowed down the opening gulfs of fire....  But lot the light of the morning cease, and return no more:  let the hour of morning come, and bring with it no 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 die.  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 centre.  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 make 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;” and we must not think that, because he shines insensibly or silently, as a mere luminous object, he is therefore powerless.  The greatest powers are ever those which lie back of the little stirs and commotions of nature:  and I verily believe that the insensible influences of good men are as much more potent than what I have called their voluntary or active, as the great silent powers of nature are of greater consequence than her little disturbances and tumults.  The law of human influence is deeper than many suspect, and they lose sight of it altogether.  The outward endeavors made by good men or bad, to sway others, they call their influence; whereas it is, in fact, but a fraction, and in most cases, but a very small fraction, of the good or evil that flows out of their lives.