BUSHNELL, HORACE (1802–1876), Congregational minister and theologian. Born in Bantam, Connecticut, and reared in nearby New Preston, Bushnell attended Yale College and the Law School in New Haven. Stirred by a revival that swept the college in 1831, he decided to enter Yale Divinity School. In 1833 he was ordained pastor of the North Church of Hartford. He experienced an extraordinary spiritual illumination in 1848, a year in which he was also invited to lecture at Harvard, Andover, and Yale. The books resulting from these lectures and from Bushnell's attempts to clarify and refine their content in the face of criticism (God in Christ, 1849, and Christ in Theology, 1851) stirred up a hornet's nest of controversy and brought charges of heresy from conservative churchmen. In 1858 Bushnell's Nature and the Supernatural was published, and Christian Nurture, probably his best-known work, appeared in 1861 (an earlier version had been published in 1847). Persistent health problems...