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THE

CHRISTIAN AMBASSADOR.

R

ART. I-RALPH WALDO EMERSON.*

ALPH WALDO EMERSON was born in Boston on the 25th day of May, 1803. His father was the Rev. William Emerson, pastor of the First Church of Boston; his mother's family is not known to us. His ancestry had a strong leaning towards theology, since for eight generations there had ever been a minister among them. Of the intellectual and moral traits of Emerson's immediate ancestors nothing is known to the public. His father died young. We have no glimpse of the domestic life of the youth. He has a brother living; another, though sleeping in a West Indian tomb, still lives in the tender verse fraternal affection has consecrated to his memory. These are the only data we have been able to gather up in regard to the domestic condition under which Emerson had his early development. His education was begun in one of the public grammar-schools of Boston, and was continued in the famous Latin School of that place. Here his preparation for college was made. In his fifteenth year he entered Harvard College as freshman, and graduated there in August, 1821. He won no special distinction in the regular studies, but is said to have been unusually well informed in English literature, and to have made ample use of the college library. He showed much ability in composition, and gained prizes for declamation and dissertations. His taste for letters declared itself in juvenile poems, and in a steady attention to imaginative literature. He was chosen poet for the exercises of class-day. For six years after leaving college he was engaged in teaching school. The only glimpse we gain of his life during these years is his own record of a visit he and his brother made, in the family of the elder President Adams, on invitation. Our schoolmaster, then, had dignity and worth and social recognition in 1825. During the next year he was authorised to preach the Gospel; which implies that he had attended with some care to * From the American "Methodist Quarterly."

VOL. XIII.-NEW SERIES.

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the study of theology. From ill-health, or other causes, he was not settled in the work of the ministry until 1829, when he was ordained as colleague of the Rev. Henry Ware, Jun., in the pastorate of the Second Church of Boston. Glimpses of his studies, doubts, difficulties, and conclusions during this period, we have none. Mr. Emerson was elected to this position on the 11th of January, 1829, and was ordained the 11th of March, ensuing. He had already supplied the pulpit of the Second Church for some time with general acceptance. Mr. Ware, who was deemed a good judge of men, records his favourable impressions of the young minister in two letters. To Mr. Barry he writes: "I have the great satisfaction of leaving my people well provided for, as they are about ordaining Mr. Emerson as colleague." Somewhat later he writes to his brother William: "My colleague has begun his work in the best possible spirit, and with just the promise I like. The few who talked of leaving the society are won to remain, and it is as flourishing as ever. We have given up hired singing, and employ our own men and women."

Mr. Ware sailed for Europe in great peace of mind, since he left a brave and good young minister behind to watch over the harmonious and prosperous Church he loved. The hired singing, too, was well out of the way, so that the travelling pastor expected to hear only tidings of success from the beloved flock. These expectations were made good. Eighteen months later, Mr. Ware, in a farewell address to his Church, says: "Providence presented to you at once a man on whom your hearts could rest." In February, 1831, Mr. Ware attended the funeral of Mrs. Emerson, who died a few months after her marriage. The next reference we have to Emerson records the fact that, 1832, he resigned his pastoral charge on the ground of differences between himself and the Church on the communion question. What the nature of this difference was, and how Mr. Emerson bore himself in the discussion, are things left wholly in the dark; but the fact itself is noteworthy, because it shows that, when his ministry was closed and his relation with the Church dissolved at his own request, Emerson had not broken with the Christian religion itself; for, whatever the communion question may mean, it does not touch the basis of the Christian system. When he visited Coleridge, in 1833, he felt compelled to state, in view of severe strictures on Unitarianism, that he had himself been born and bred in that faith.

Emerson characterizes his general reading up to this date as narrow and desultory. The "Edinburgh Review" had quickened his intellect, and stimulated his original inclination to letters. Through its pages he gained a vague, but alluring, outlook upon the world of literature. Yet so incurious was his temper, that he declares there was no man living in Great Britain, in 1833, whom he cared

to see, except the writers Coleridge, Wordsworth, Landor, De Quincy, and, above them all, Carlyle, and the lion-hearted soldier, Wellington. This shows that, at this early date, literature was five-sixths of the world for him. Thus was his true vocation declared.

After less than a year's absence Emerson returned home, with freshened health and vigor, to enter upon his unique and remarkable career. His first public appearance after his arrival was in the character of a lecturer on water. For several consecutive years he gave courses of lectures in Boston and other places. Thus in 1833-34, he gave biographical lectures on Michael Angelo, George Fox, Milton, Luther. Then followed, in as many successive winters, a course of ten lectures on English Literature, one of twelve on the Philosophy of History, one of ten on Human Life, one of ten on the Present Age; and, in 1841, another of seven on Human Life. Since the last date he has written and delivered many lectures on a wide variety of themes, and has ranged over the United States and visited England to reach his appropriate audience. Few men have spoken so much from the platform, and nobody has discussed more serious topics. He has always taken pains to give his maturest thoughts their most brilliant expression before claiming the public ear. The response must have been exceedingly gratifying, since no other speaker has been so well received, for so long a period, by the thoughtful public. In this respect his example has been high and salutary.

In 1835 Emerson was married to his second wife, Miss Lidian Jackson, of Plymouth, Mass., and fixed his permanent residence in Concord, Mass. He presently began to publish his writings. The lectures on Milton and Michael Angelo appeared in the "North American Review." They gave evidence that he had not yet reached the peculiar opinions in philosophy and religion with which he was soon to startle America. They also show that he had not yet acquired the condensed, epigrammatic, and brilliant style for which he is renowned. Probably for these reasons those papers are not included in his collected writings.

Somewhere between the resignation of his pastoral office, in 1832, and the publication, in 1834, of his prose-poem, "Nature," Emerson had rejected the Christian religion as an authoritative and ultimate revelation of the will of God. His nature is taciturn, and we have no disclosure of the motive that drew him on to so momentous a conclusion. The only hint we have in the matter is contained in his account of his earlist visit to Carlyle at Craigenputtock: "We went out to walk over long hills, and looked at Criffel, then without his cap, and down into Wordsworth's country. There we sat down and talked of the immortality of the soul. It was not Carlyle's fault that we talked on that topic, for he had the natural disinclination of every nimble spirit to bruise itself against walls, and

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