Emerson's Divinity School
Delivered before the Senior Class in Divinity College,
Cambridge, Sunday Evening, July 15, 1838 In this refulgent summer, it has been a luxury to draw the
breath of life. The grass grows, the buds burst, the meadow is spotted with fire and gold in the tint of flowers.
The air is full of birds, and sweet with the breath of the pine, the balm-of-Gilead, and the new hay. Night brings
no gloom to the heart with its welcome shade. Through the transparent darkness the stars pour their almost spiritual
rays. Man under them seems a young child, and his huge globe a toy. The cool night bathes the world as with a river,
and prepares his eyes again for the crimson dawn. The mystery of nature was never displayed more happily. The corn
and the wine have been freely dealt to all creatures, and the never-broken silence with which the old bounty goes
forward, has not yielded yet one word of explanation. One is constrained to respect the perfection of this world,
in which our senses converse. How wide; how rich; what invitation from every property it gives to every faculty
of man! In its fruitful soils; in its navigable sea; in its mountains of metal and stone; in its forests of all
woods; in its animals; in its chemical ingredients; in the powers and path of light, heat, attraction, and life,
it is well worth the pith and heart of great men to subdue and enjoy it. The planters, the mechanics, the inventors,
the astronomers, the builders of cities, and the captains, history delights to honor. But when the mind opens, and reveals the laws which traverse
the universe, and make things what they are, then shrinks the great world at once into a mere illustration and
fable of this mind. What am I? and What is? asks the human spirit with a curiosity new-kindled, but never to be
quenched. Behold these outrunning laws, which our imperfect apprehension can see tend this way and that, but not
come full circle. Behold these infinite relations, so like, so unlike; many, yet one. I would study, I would know,
I would admire forever. These works of thought have been the entertainments of the human spirit in all ages. A more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty appears to man
when his heart and mind open to the sentiment of virtue. Then he is instructed in what is above him. He learns
that his being is without bound; that, to the good, to the perfect, he is born, low as he now lies in evil and
weakness. That which he venerates is still his own, though he has not realized it yet. He
ought. He knows the sense of that grand word, though
his analysis fails entirely to render account of it. When in innocency, or when by intellectual perception, he
attains to say, -- `I love the Right; Truth is beautiful within and without, forevermore. Virtue, I am thine: save
me: use me: thee will I serve, day and night, in great, in small, that I may be not virtuous, but virtue;' -- then
is the end of the creation answered, and God is well pleased. The sentiment of virtue is a reverence and delight in the
presence of certain divine laws. It perceives that this homely game of life we play, covers, under what seem foolish
details, principles that astonish. The child amidst his baubles, is learning the action of light, motion, gravity,
muscular force; and in the game of human life, love, fear, justice, appetite, man, and God, interact. These laws
refuse to be adequately stated. They will not be written out on paper, or spoken by the tongue. They elude our
persevering thought; yet we read them hourly in each other's faces, in each other's actions, in our own remorse.
The moral traits which are all globed into every virtuous act and thought, -- in speech, we must sever, and describe
or suggest by painful enumeration of many particulars. Yet, as this sentiment is the essence of all religion, let
me guide your eye to the precise objects of the sentiment, by an enumeration of some of those classes of facts
in which this element is conspicuous. The intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of the
perfection of the laws of the soul. These laws execute themselves. They are out of time, out of space, and not
subject to circumstance. Thus; in the soul of man there is a justice whose retributions are instant and entire.
He who does a good deed, is instantly ennobled. He who does a mean deed, is by the action itself contracted. He
who puts off impurity, thereby puts on purity. If a man is at heart just, then in so far is he God; the safety
of God, the immortality of God, the majesty of God do enter into that man with justice. If a man dissemble, deceive,
he deceives himself, and goes out of acquaintance with his own being. A man in the view of absolute goodness, adores,
with total humility. Every step so downward, is a step upward. The man who renounces himself, comes to himself. See how this rapid intrinsic energy worketh everywhere, righting
wrongs, correcting appearances, and bringing up facts to a harmony with thoughts. Its operation in life, though
slow to the senses, is, at last, as sure as in the soul. By it, a man is made the Providence to himself, dispensing
good to his goodness, and evil to his sin. Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish;
murder will speak out of stone walls. The least admixture of a lie, -- for example, the taint of vanity, the least
attempt to make a good impression, a favorable appearance, -- will instantly vitiate the effect. But speak the
truth, and all nature and all spirits help you with unexpected furtherance. Speak the truth, and all things alive
or brute are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there, do seem to stir and move to bear you
witness. See again the perfection of the Law as it applies itself to the affections, and becomes the law of society.
As we are, so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus of their
own volition, souls proceed into heaven, into hell. These facts have always suggested to man the sublime creed,
that the world is not the product of manifold power, but of one will, of one mind; and that one mind is everywhere
active, in each ray of the star, in each wavelet of the pool; and whatever opposes that will, is everywhere balked
and baffled, because things are made so, and not otherwise. Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute:
it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute
and real. So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he. For all things proceed out of this same spirit,
which is differently named love, justice, temperance, in its different applications, just as the ocean receives
different names on the several shores which it washes. All things proceed out of the same spirit, and all things
conspire with it. Whilst a man seeks good ends, he is strong by the whole strength of nature. In so far as he roves
from these ends, he bereaves himself of power, of auxiliaries; his being shrinks out of all remote channels, he
becomes less and less, a mote, a point, until absolute badness is absolute death. The perception of this law of laws awakens in the mind a sentiment
which we call the religious sentiment, and which makes our highest happiness. Wonderful is its power to charm and
to command. It is a mountain air. It is the embalmer of the world. It is myrrh and storax, and chlorine and rosemary.
It makes the sky and the hills sublime, and the silent song of the stars is it. By it, is the universe made safe
and habitable, not by science or power. Thought may work cold and intransitive in things, and find no end or unity;
but the dawn of the sentiment of virtue on the heart, gives and is the assurance that Law is sovereign over all
natures; and the worlds, time, space, eternity, do seem to break out into joy. This sentiment is divine and deifying. It is the beatitude
of man. It makes him illimitable. Through it, the soul first knows itself. It corrects the capital mistake of the
infant man, who seeks to be great by following the great, and hopes to derive advantages
from another, -- by showing the fountain of all good
to be in himself, and that he, equally with every man, is an inlet into the deeps of Reason. When he says, "I
ought;" when love warms him; when he chooses, warned from on high, the good and great deed; then, deep melodies
wander through his soul from Supreme Wisdom. Then he can worship, and be enlarged by his worship; for he can never
go behind this sentiment. In the sublimest flights of the soul, rectitude is never surmounted, love is never outgrown. This sentiment lies at the foundation of society, and successively
creates all forms of worship. The principle of veneration never dies out. Man fallen into superstition, into sensuality,
is never quite without the visions of the moral sentiment. In like manner, all the expressions of this sentiment
are sacred and permanent in proportion to their purity. The expressions of this sentiment affect us more than all
other compositions. The sentences of the oldest time, which ejaculate this piety, are still fresh and fragrant.
This thought dwelled always deepest in the minds of men in the devout and contemplative East; not alone in Palestine,
where it reached its purest expression, but in Egypt, in Persia, in India, in China. Europe has always owed to
oriental genius, its divine impulses. What these holy bards said, all sane men found agreeable and true. And the
unique impression of Jesus upon mankind, whose name is not so much written as ploughed into the history of this
world, is proof of the subtle virtue of this infusion. Meantime, whilst the doors of the temple stand open, night
and day, before every man, and the oracles of this truth cease never, it is guarded by one stern condition; this,
namely; it is an intuition. It cannot be received at second hand. Truly speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation,
that I can receive from another soul. What he announces, I must find true in me, or wholly reject; and on his word,
or as his second, be he who he may, I can accept nothing. On the contrary, the absence of this primary faith is
the presence of degradation. As is the flood so is the ebb. Let this faith depart, and the very words it spake,
and the things it made, become false and hurtful. Then falls the church, the state, art, letters, life. The doctrine
of the divine nature being forgotten, a sickness infects and dwarfs the constitution. Once man was all; now he
is an appendage, a nuisance. And because the indwelling Supreme Spirit cannot wholly be got rid of, the doctrine
of it suffers this perversion, that the divine nature is attributed to one or two persons, and denied to all the
rest, and denied with fury. The doctrine of inspiration is lost; the base doctrine of the majority of voices, usurps
the place of the doctrine of the soul. Miracles, prophecy, poetry; the ideal life, the holy life, exist as ancient
history merely; they are not in the belief, nor in the aspiration of society; but, when suggested, seem ridiculous.
Life is comic or pitiful, as soon as the high ends of being fade out of sight, and man becomes near-sighted, and
can only attend to what addresses the senses. These general views, which, whilst they are general, none
will contest, find abundant illustration in the history of religion, and especially in the history of the Christian
church. In that, all of us have had our birth and nurture. The truth contained in that, you, my young friends,
are now setting forth to teach. As the Cultus, or established worship of the civilized world, it has great historical
interest for us. Of its blessed words, which have been the consolation of humanity, you need not that I should
speak. I shall endeavor to discharge my duty to you, on this occasion, by pointing out two errors in its administration,
which daily appear more gross from the point of view we have just now taken. Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw
with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and
had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to what is in you
and me. He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his world.
He said, in this jubilee of sublime emotion, `I am divine. Through me, God acts; through me, speaks. Would you
see God, see me; or, see thee, when thou also thinkest as I now think.' But what a distortion did his doctrine
and memory suffer in the same, in the next, and the following ages! There is no doctrine of the Reason which will
bear to be taught by the Understanding. The understanding caught this high chant from the poet's lips, and said,
in the next age, `This was Jehovah come down out of heaven. I will kill you, if you say he was a man.' The idioms
of his language, and the figures of his rhetoric, have usurped the place of his truth; and churches are not built
on his principles, but on his tropes. Christianity became a Mythus, as the poetic teaching of Greece and of Egypt,
before. He spoke of miracles; for he felt that man's life was a miracle, and all that man doth, and he knew that
this daily miracle shines, as the character ascends. But the word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches,
gives a false impression; it is Monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain. He felt respect for Moses and the prophets; but no unfit tenderness
at postponing their initial revelations, to the hour and the man that now is; to the eternal revelation in the
heart. Thus was he a true man. Having seen that the law in us is commanding, he would not suffer it to be commanded.
Boldly, with hand, and heart, and life, he declared it was God. Thus is he, as I think, the only soul in history
who has appreciated the worth of a man. 1. In this point of view we become very sensible of the first
defect of historical Christianity. Historical Christianity has fallen into the error that corrupts all attempts
to communicate religion. As it appears to us, and as it has appeared for ages, it is not the doctrine of the soul,
but an exaggeration of the personal, the positive, the ritual. It has dwelt, it dwells, with noxious exaggeration
about the person
of Jesus. The soul knows no persons. It invites every man to expand to the full circle of the universe, and will
have no preferences but those of spontaneous love. But by this eastern monarchy of a Christianity, which indolence
and fear have built, the friend of man is made the injurer of man. The manner in which his name is surrounded with
expressions, which were once sallies of admiration and love, but are now petrified into official titles, kills
all generous sympathy and liking. All who hear me, feel, that the language that describes Christ to Europe and
America, is not the style of friendship and enthusiasm to a good and noble heart, but is appropriated and formal,
-- paints a demigod, as the Orientals or the Greeks would describe Osiris or Apollo. Accept the injurious impositions
of our early catachetical instruction, and even honesty and self-denial were but splendid sins, if they did not
wear the Christian name. One would rather be `A pagan, suckled in a creed outworn,' than to be defrauded of his manly right in coming into nature,
and finding not names and places, not land and professions, but even virtue and truth foreclosed and monopolized.
You shall not be a man even. You shall not own the world; you shall not dare, and live after the infinite Law that
is in you, and in company with the infinite Beauty which heaven and earth reflect to you in all lovely forms; but
you must subordinate your nature to Christ's nature; you must accept our interpretations; and take his portrait
as the vulgar draw it. That is always best which gives me to myself. The sublime
is excited in me by the great stoical doctrine, Obey thyself. That which shows God in me, fortifies me. That which
shows God out of me, makes me a wart and a wen. There is no longer a necessary reason for my being. Already the
long shadows of untimely oblivion creep over me, and I shall decease forever. The divine bards are the friends of my virtue, of my intellect
of my strength. They admonish me, that the gleams which flash across my mind, are not mine, but God's; that they
had the like, and were not disobedient to the heavenly vision. So I love them. Noble provocations go out from them,
inviting me to resist evil; to subdue the world; and to Be. And thus by his holy thoughts, Jesus serves us, and
thus only. To aim to convert a man by miracles, is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ,
is now, as always, to be made, by the reception of beautiful sentiments. It is true that a great and rich soul,
like his, falling among the simple, does so preponderate, that, as his did, it names the world. The world seems
to them to exist for him, and they have not yet drunk so deeply of his sense, as to see that only by coming again
to themselves, or to God in themselves, can they grow forevermore. It is a low benefit to give me something; it
is a high benefit to enable me to do somewhat of myself. The time is coming when all men will see, that the gift
of God to the soul is not a vaunting, overpowering, excluding sanctity, but a sweet, natural goodness, a goodness
like thine and mine, and that so invites thine and mine to be and to grow. The injustice of the vulgar tone of preaching is not less
flagrant to Jesus, than to the souls which it profanes. The preachers do not see that they make his gospel not
glad, and shear him of the locks of beauty and the attributes of heaven. When I see a majestic Epaminondas, or
Washington; when I see among my contemporaries, a true orator, an upright judge, a dear friend; when I vibrate
to the melody and fancy of a poem; I see beauty that is to be desired. And so lovely, and with yet more entire
consent of my human being, sounds in my ear the severe music of the bards that have sung of the true God in all
ages. Now do not degrade the life and dialogues of Christ out of the circle of this charm, by insulation and peculiarity.
Let them lie as they befel, alive and warm, part of human life, and of the landscape, and of the cheerful day. 2. The second defect of the traditionary and limited way of
using the mind of Christ is a consequence of the first; this, namely; that the Moral Nature, that Law of laws,
whose revelations introduce greatness, -- yea, God himself, into the open soul, is not explored as the fountain
of the established teaching in society. Men have come to speak of the revelation as somewhat long ago given and
done, as if God were dead. The injury to faith throttles the preacher; and the goodliest of institutions becomes
an uncertain and inarticulate voice. It is very certain that it is the effect of conversation with
the beauty of the soul, to beget a desire and need to impart to others the same knowledge and love. If utterance
is denied, the thought lies like a burden on the man. Always the seer is a sayer. Somehow his dream is told: somehow
he publishes it with solemn joy: sometimes with pencil on canvas; sometimes with chisel on stone; sometimes in
towers and aisles of granite, his soul's worship is builded; sometimes in anthems of indefinite music; but clearest
and most permanent, in words. The man enamored of this excellency, becomes its priest or
poet. The office is coeval with the world. But observe the condition, the spiritual limitation of the office. The
spirit only can teach. Not any profane man, not any sensual, not any liar, not any slave can teach, but only he
can give, who has; he only can create, who is. The man on whom the soul descends, through whom the soul speaks,
alone can teach. Courage, piety, love, wisdom, can teach; and every man can open his door to these angels, and
they shall bring him the gift of tongues. But the man who aims to speak as books enable, as synods use, as the
fashion guides, and as interest commands, babbles. Let him hush. To this holy office, you propose to devote yourselves. I wish
you may feel your call in throbs of desire and hope. The office is the first in the world. It is of that reality,
that it cannot suffer the deduction of any falsehood. And it is my duty to say to you, that the need was never
greater of new revelation than now. From the views I have already expressed, you will infer the sad conviction,
which I share, I believe, with numbers, of the universal decay and now almost death of faith in society. The soul
is not preached. The Church seems to totter to its fall, almost all life extinct. On this occasion, any complaisance
would be criminal, which told you, whose hope and commission it is to preach the faith of Christ, that the faith
of Christ is preached. It is time that this ill-suppressed murmur of all thoughtful
men against the famine of our churches; this moaning of the heart because it is bereaved of the consolation, the
hope, the grandeur, that come alone out of the culture of the moral nature; should be heard through the sleep of
indolence, and over the din of routine. This great and perpetual office of the preacher is not discharged. Preaching
is the expression of the moral sentiment in application to the duties of life. In how many churches, by how many
prophets, tell me, is man made sensible that he is an infinite Soul; that the earth and heavens are passing into
his mind; that he is drinking forever the soul of God? Where now sounds the persuasion, that by its very melody
imparadises my heart, and so affirms its own origin in heaven? Where shall I hear words such as in elder ages drew
men to leave all and follow, -- father and mother, house and land, wife and child? Where shall I hear these august
laws of moral being so pronounced, as to fill my ear, and I feel ennobled by the offer of my uttermost action and
passion? The test of the true faith, certainly, should be its power to charm and command the soul, as the laws
of nature control the activity of the hands, -- so commanding that we find pleasure and honor in obeying. The faith
should blend with the light of rising and of setting suns, with the flying cloud, the singing bird, and the breath
of flowers. But now the priest's Sabbath has lost the splendor of nature; it is unlovely; we are glad when it is
done; we can make, we do make, even sitting in our pews, a far better, holier, sweeter, for ourselves. Whenever the pulpit is usurped by a formalist, then is the
worshipper defrauded and disconsolate. We shrink as soon as the prayers begin, which do not uplift, but smite and
offend us. We are fain to wrap our cloaks about us, and secure, as best we can, a solitude that hears not. I once
heard a preacher who sorely tempted me to say, I would go to church no more. Men go, thought I, where they are
wont to go, else had no soul entered the temple in the afternoon. A snow storm was falling around us. The snow
storm was real; the preacher merely spectral; and the eye felt the sad contrast in looking at him, and then out
of the window behind him, into the beautiful meteor of the snow. He had lived in vain. He had no one word intimating
that he had laughed or wept, was married or in love, had been commended, or cheated, or chagrined. If he had ever
lived and acted, we were none the wiser for it. The capital secret of his profession, namely, to convert life into
truth, he had not learned. Not one fact in all his experience, had he yet imported into his doctrine. This man
had ploughed, and planted, and talked, and bought, and sold; he had read books; he had eaten and drunken; his head
aches; his heart throbs; he smiles and suffers; yet was there not a surmise, a hint, in all the discourse, that
he had ever lived at all. Not a line did he draw out of real history. The true preacher can be known by this, that
he deals out to the people his life, -- life passed through the fire of thought. But of the bad preacher, it could
not be told from his sermon, what age of the world he fell in; whether he had a father or a child; whether he was
a freeholder or a pauper; whether he was a citizen or a countryman; or any other fact of his biography. It seemed
strange that the people should come to church. It seemed as if their houses were very unentertaining, that they
should prefer this thoughtless clamor. It shows that there is a commanding attraction in the moral sentiment, that
can lend a faint tint of light to dulness and ignorance, coming in its name and place. The good hearer is sure
he has been touched sometimes; is sure there is somewhat to be reached, and some word that can reach it. When he
listens to these vain words, he comforts himself by their relation to his remembrance of better hours, and so they
clatter and echo unchallenged. I am not ignorant that when we preach unworthily, it is not
always quite in vain. There is a good ear, in some men, that draws supplies to virtue out of very indifferent nutriment.
There is poetic truth concealed in all the common-places of prayer and of sermons, and though foolishly spoken,
they may be wisely heard; for, each is some select expression that broke out in a moment of piety from some stricken
or jubilant soul, and its excellency made it remembered. The prayers and even the dogmas of our church, are like
the zodiac of Denderah, and the astronomical monuments of the Hindoos, wholly insulated from anything now extant
in the life and business of the people. They mark the height to which the waters once rose. But this docility is
a check upon the mischief from the good and devout. In a large portion of the community, the religious service
gives rise to quite other thoughts and emotions. We need not chide the negligent servant. We are struck with pity,
rather, at the swift retribution of his sloth. Alas for the unhappy man that is called to stand in the pulpit,
and not
give bread of life. Everything that befalls, accuses him. Would he ask contributions for the missions, foreign
or domestic? Instantly his face is suffused with shame, to propose to his parish, that they should send money a
hundred or a thousand miles, to furnish such poor fare as they have at home, and would do well to go the hundred
or the thousand miles to escape. Would he urge people to a godly way of living; -- and can he ask a fellow-creature
to come to Sabbath meetings, when he and they all know what is the poor uttermost they can hope for therein? Will
he invite them privately to the Lord's Supper? He dares not. If no heart warm this rite, the hollow, dry, creaking
formality is too plain, than that he can face a man of wit and energy, and put the invitation without terror. In
the street, what has he to say to the bold village blasphemer? The village blasphemer sees fear in the face, form,
and gait of the minister. Let me not taint the sincerity of this plea by any oversight
of the claims of good men. I know and honor the purity and strict conscience of numbers of the clergy. What life
the public worship retains, it owes to the scattered company of pious men, who minister here and there in the churches,
and who, sometimes accepting with too great tenderness the tenet of the elders, have not accepted from others,
but from their own heart, the genuine impulses of virtue, and so still command our love and awe, to the sanctity
of character. Moreover, the exceptions are not so much to be found in a few eminent preachers, as in the better
hours, the truer inspirations of all, -- nay, in the sincere moments of every man. But with whatever exception,
it is still true, that tradition characterizes the preaching of this country; that it comes out of the memory,
and not out of the soul; that it aims at what is usual, and not at what is necessary and eternal; that thus, historical
Christianity destroys the power of preaching, by withdrawing it from the exploration of the moral nature of man,
where the sublime is, where are the resources of astonishment and power. What a cruel injustice it is to that Law,
the joy of the whole earth, which alone can make thought dear and rich; that Law whose fatal sureness the astronomical
orbits poorly emulate, that it is travestied and depreciated, that it is behooted and behowled, and not a trait,
not a word of it articulated. The pulpit in losing sight of this Law, loses its reason, and gropes after it knows
not what. And for want of this culture, the soul of the community is sick and faithless. It wants nothing so much
as a stern, high, stoical, Christian discipline, to make it know itself and the divinity that speaks through it.
Now man is ashamed of himself; he skulks and sneaks through the world, to be tolerated, to be pitied, and scarcely
in a thousand years does any man dare to be wise and good, and so draw after him the tears and blessings of his
kind. Certainly there have been periods when, from the inactivity
of the intellect on certain truths, a greater faith was possible in names and persons. The Puritans in England
and America, found in the Christ of the Catholic Church, and in the dogmas inherited from Rome, scope for their
austere piety, and their longings for civil freedom. But their creed is passing away, and none arises in its room.
I think no man can go with his thoughts about him, into one of our churches, without feeling, that what hold the
public worship had on men is gone, or going. It has lost its grasp on the affection of the good, and the fear of
the bad. In the country, neighborhoods, half parishes are signing
off, -- to use the local term. It is already beginning
to indicate character and religion to withdraw from the religious meetings. I have heard a devout person, who prized
the Sabbath, say in bitterness of heart, "On Sundays, it seems wicked to go to church." And the motive,
that holds the best there, is now only a hope and a waiting. What was once a mere circumstance, that the best and
the worst men in the parish, the poor and the rich, the learned and the ignorant, young and old, should meet one
day as fellows in one house, in sign of an equal right in the soul, -- has come to be a paramount motive for going
thither. My friends, in these two errors, I think, I find the causes
of a decaying church and a wasting unbelief. And what greater calamity can fall upon a nation, than the loss of
worship? Then all things go to decay. Genius leaves the temple, to haunt the senate, or the market. Literature
becomes frivolous. Science is cold. The eye of youth is not lighted by the hope of other worlds, and age is without
honor. Society lives to trifles, and when men die, we do not mention them. And now, my brothers, you will ask, What in these desponding
days can be done by us? The remedy is already declared in the ground of our complaint of the Church. We have contrasted
the Church with the Soul. In the soul, then, let the redemption be sought. Wherever a man comes, there comes revolution.
The old is for slaves. When a man comes, all books are legible, all things transparent, all religions are forms.
He is religious. Man is the wonderworker. He is seen amid miracles. All men bless and curse. He saith yea and nay,
only. The stationariness of religion; the assumption that the age of inspiration is past, that the Bible is closed;
the fear of degrading the character of Jesus by representing him as a man; indicate with sufficient clearness the
falsehood of our theology. It is the office of a true teacher to show us that God is, not was; that He speaketh,
not spake. The true Christianity, -- a faith like Christ's in the infinitude of man, -- is lost. None believeth
in the soul of man, but only in some man or person old and departed. Ah me! no man goeth alone. All men go in flocks
to this saint or that poet, avoiding the God who seeth in secret. They cannot see in secret; they love to be blind
in public. They think society wiser than their soul, and know not that one soul, and their soul, is wiser than
the whole world. See how nations and races flit by on the sea of time, and leave no ripple to tell where they floated
or sunk, and one good soul shall make the name of Moses, or of Zeno, or of Zoroaster, reverend forever. None assayeth
the stern ambition to be the Self of the nation, and of nature, but each would be an easy secondary to some Christian
scheme, or sectarian connection, or some eminent man. Once leave your own knowledge of God, your own sentiment,
and take secondary knowledge, as St. Paul's, or George Fox's, or Swedenborg's, and you get wide from God with every
year this secondary form lasts, and if, as now, for centuries, -- the chasm yawns to that breadth, that men can
scarcely be convinced there is in them anything divine. Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse
the good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or
veil. Friends enough you shall find who will hold up to your emulation Wesleys and Oberlins, Saints and Prophets.
Thank God for these good men, but say, `I also am a man.' Imitation cannot go above its model. The imitator dooms
himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it, because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm.
In the imitator, something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another
man's. Yourself a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost, -- cast behind
you all conformity, and acquaint men at first hand with Deity. Look to it first and only, that fashion, custom,
authority, pleasure, and money, are nothing to you, -- are not bandages over your eyes, that you cannot see, --
but live with the privilege of the immeasurable mind. Not too anxious to visit periodically all families and each
family in your parish connection, -- when you meet one of these men or women, be to them a divine man; be to them
thought and virtue; let their timid aspirations find in you a friend; let their trampled instincts be genially
tempted out in your atmosphere; let their doubts know that you have doubted, and their wonder feel that you have
wondered. By trusting your own heart, you shall gain more confidence in other men. For all our penny-wisdom, for
all our soul-destroying slavery to habit, it is not to be doubted, that all men have sublime thoughts; that all
men value the few real hours of life; they love to be heard; they love to be caught up into the vision of principles.
We mark with light in the memory the few interviews we have had, in the dreary years of routine and of sin, with
souls that made our souls wiser; that spoke what we thought; that told us what we knew; that gave us leave to be
what we inly were. Discharge to men the priestly office, and, present or absent, you shall be followed with their
love as by an angel. And, to this end, let us not aim at common degrees of merit.
Can we not leave, to such as love it, the virtue that glitters for the commendation of society, and ourselves pierce
the deep solitudes of absolute ability and worth? We easily come up to the standard of goodness in society. Society's
praise can be cheaply secured, and almost all men are content with those easy merits; but the instant effect of
conversing with God, will be, to put them away. There are persons who are not actors, not speakers, but influences;
persons too great for fame, for display; who disdain eloquence; to whom all we call art and artist, seems too nearly
allied to show and by-ends, to the exaggeration of the finite and selfish, and loss of the universal. The orators,
the poets, the commanders encroach on us only as fair women do, by our allowance and homage. Slight them by preoccupation
of mind, slight them, as you can well afford to do, by high and universal aims, and they instantly feel that you
have right, and that it is in lower places that they must shine. They also feel your right; for they with you are
open to the influx of the all-knowing Spirit, which annihilates before its broad noon the little shades and gradations
of intelligence in the compositions we call wiser and wisest. In such high communion, let us study the grand strokes of
rectitude: a bold benevolence, an independence of friends, so that not the unjust wishes of those who love us,
shall impair our freedom, but we shall resist for truth's sake the freest flow of kindness, and appeal to sympathies
far in advance; and, -- what is the highest form in which we know this beautiful element, -- a certain solidity
of merit, that has nothing to do with opinion, and which is so essentially and manifestly virtue, that it is taken
for granted, that the right, the brave, the generous step will be taken by it, and nobody thinks of commending
it. You would compliment a coxcomb doing a good act, but you would not praise an angel. The silence that accepts
merit as the most natural thing in the world, is the highest applause. Such souls, when they appear, are the Imperial
Guard of Virtue, the perpetual reserve, the dictators of fortune. One needs not praise their courage, -- they are
the heart and soul of nature. O my friends, there are resources in us on which we have not drawn. There are men
who rise refreshed on hearing a threat; men to whom a crisis which intimidates and paralyzes the majority, -- demanding
not the faculties of prudence and thrift, but comprehension, immovableness, the readiness of sacrifice, -- comes
graceful and beloved as a bride. Napoleon said of Massena, that he was not himself until the battle began to go
against him; then, when the dead began to fall in ranks around him, awoke his powers of combination, and he put
on terror and victory as a robe. So it is in rugged crises, in unweariable endurance, and in aims which put sympathy
out of question, that the angel is shown. But these are heights that we can scarce remember and look up to, without
contrition and shame. Let us thank God that such things exist. And now let us do what we can to rekindle the smouldering,
nigh quenched fire on the altar. The evils of the church that now is are manifest. The question returns, What shall
we do? I confess, all attempts to project and establish a Cultus with new rites and forms, seem to me vain. Faith
makes us, and not we it, and faith makes its own forms. All attempts to contrive a system are as cold as the new
worship introduced by the French to the goddess of Reason, -- to-day, pasteboard and fillagree, and ending to-morrow
in madness and murder. Rather let the breath of new life be breathed by you through the forms already existing.
For, if once you are alive, you shall find they shall become plastic and new. The remedy to their deformity is,
first, soul, and second, soul, and evermore, soul. A whole popedom of forms, one pulsation of virtue can uplift
and vivify. Two inestimable advantages Christianity has given us; first; the Sabbath, the jubilee of the whole
world; whose light dawns welcome alike into the closet of the philosopher, into the garret of toil, and into prison
cells, and everywhere suggests, even to the vile, the dignity of spiritual being. Let it stand forevermore, a temple,
which new love, new faith, new sight shall restore to more than its first splendor to mankind. And secondly, the
institution of preaching, -- the speech of man to men, -- essentially the most flexible of all organs, of all forms.
What hinders that now, everywhere, in pulpits, in lecture-rooms, in houses, in fields, wherever the invitation
of men or your own occasions lead you, you speak the very truth, as your life and conscience teach it, and cheer
the waiting, fainting hearts of men with new hope and new revelation? I look for the hour when that supreme Beauty, which ravished
the souls of those eastern men, and chiefly of those Hebrews, and through their lips spoke oracles to all time,
shall speak in the West also. The Hebrew and Greek Scriptures contain immortal sentences, that have been bread
of life to millions. But they have no epical integrity; are fragmentary; are not shown in their order to the intellect.
I look for the new Teacher, that shall follow so far those shining laws, that he shall see them come full circle;
shall see their rounding complete grace; shall see the world to be the mirror of the soul; shall see the identity
of the law of gravitation with purity of heart; and shall show that the Ought, that Duty, is one thing with Science,
with Beauty, and with Joy.
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