conscious that he must give pain and offence to many, they were not to be declined. Accordingly, on the evening of Sunday, July 15, 1838, the memorable "Address" before the Divinity School was delivered to a deeply attentive audience. The preacher felt the critical character of his situation. He knew that an open declaration of his sentiments, which he could not well avoid, would stir the public mind and arouse much bitter feeling. Still, a duty was laid upon him and he showed no wish to shun it. His Address was prepared with great care. It abounded in happy thoughts and felicitous expression. It was simple, direct, manly. It avoided a directly polemic form; but the antagonism between the current notions of religion and the new faith was sternly drawn. It was a critical hour and a critical act. It was an arraignment and denunciation of the weaknesses and errors of Christian Churches as they appeared to Emerson, and an indication of what he thought a better way. Premising that our account gives no hint of the beauty and charm of the discourse, let us attempt a statement of its doctrinal positions. The preacher surveys man as a being capable of knowledge, capable of obligation, percipient of virtue; cognizant, through intuition of the moral sentiment, of the perfection of the laws of the soul, and related through his own choices to all possible good or evil. These facts have always suggested to man the sublime creed that the world is the product of one will, of one mind; that one mind is active every-where, in each ray of the star, in each wavelet of the pool; and that whatever opposes that will is every-where balked and baffled because things are made so, and not otherwise. It is the perception of this law which awakens in us the religious sentiment, our highest happiness. It teaches man that the spring of all good is in himself, that he is an inlet into the deeps of Reason. This sentiment is the basis of society, and successively creates all forms of worship. Access to it is free to all, but under one stern condition, namely, it is an intuition. The evils of the times grow out of neglect of these principles. So far the discussion was general; but the preacher next proceeded to point out two gross errors in the administration of Christianity. He paused to give his conception of Jesus. was a true prophet.

He

He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. . He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and ever goes forth anew to take possession of the 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 thinkest as I now think." Thus was he true man, and the only soul in history who rated man at his true worth. Hence, popular Christianity errs by making too much of the person of Christ, by insisting that men shall subordinate their natures to his. That which gives me to myself is best. The sublime

is excited in me by the stoical doctrine, Obey thyself. Others help us only by stimulating us to this duty. Thus, and thus only, can Jesus aid us.

The second great error of the Church lies in her inquest for light on personal duties and public questions; not in the moral nature where God speaks, but in a written revelation.

From these positions the preacher naturally went on to say that faith was nigh extinct in society. "The soul is not preached. The Church seems to totter to its fall; almost all life is extinct. It would be criminal complaisance to tell you that the faith of Christ is preached." "In the soul, then, let the redemption be sought. Yourself a new-born Bard of the Holy Ghost, cast behind you all conformity, and acquaint men at first hand with Deity." The remedy for existing ills "is, first, soul; and second, soul; and evermore, soul."

One cannot easily conceive the mingled emotions of delight and vexation awakened in the audience by such a discourse, according as men accepted, denied, or doubted its doctrines. Here was a distinct and unequivocal negation of the authority of Church and Scripture, and such an exaltation of the soul as had never before greeted men's ears in America. No wonder that prudent men were startled, and even rash men held their breath. The thing had not been done on the sly, and could not pass without protest. That evening Henry Ware, jun., expressed to Emerson his approval of portions of the address, and the next day sent him a letter to forestall a possible misunderstanding. Ware says:

It has occured to me that since I said to you last night, I should probably assent to your unqualified statements,, if I could take your qualifications with them; I am bound in fairness to add, that this applies only to a portion, and not to all. With regard to some, I must confess that they appear to me more than doubtful, and that their prevalence would tend to overthrow the authority and influence of Christianity. On this account I look with sorrow and no little anxiety to the course which your mind has been taking.

Emerson replied :

I could not but feel pain in saying some things in that place and presence which I supposed might meet dissent, and the dissent, I may say, of dear friends and benefactors of mine. Yet, as my conviction is perfect in the substantial truth of the doctrine of this discourse, and is not very new, you will see at once that it must appear to me very important that it be spoken; and I thought I would not pay the nobleness of my friends so mean a compliment as to suppress my opposition to their supposed views out of fear of offence. I would rather say to them, these things look thus to me; to you, otherwise. Let us say out our uttermost word, and be the all-pervading truth, as it surely will, judge between us.

Two months later Mr. Ware sent Emerson a copy of a sermon of his aimed at pantheistic views, with certain explanations. He says he knows not how far the sermon and Address will be found in conflict, since he does not clearly understand Emerson's positions, or "by what arguments the doctrine that the soul knows no persons' is justified to your mind." This drew a reply from Emerson so characteristic and important that it must be transcribed entire :

CONCORD, October 8, 1838. MY DEAR SIR: I ought sooner to have acknowledged your kind letter of last week, and the sermon it accompanied. The letter was right noble, and mauly. The sermon, too, I have read with attention. If it assails any doctrines of mine-perhaps I am not so quick to see it as authors generally—certainly I did not feel any disposition to depart from my habitual contentment, that you should say your thought while I say mine.

I believe I must tell you what I think of my new position. It strikes me very oddly that good and wise men at Cambridge and Boston should think of raising me into an object of criticism. I have always been, from my very incapacity of methodical writing, a chartered libertine, free to worship and free to rail, lucky when I could make myself understood, but never esteemed near enough to the institutions and mind of society to deserve the notice of the masters of literature and religion. I have appreciated fully the advantages of my position, for I well know that there is no scholar less willing or less able to be a polemic. I could not give account of myself if challenged. I could not possibly give you one of the "arguments" you cruelly hint at, on which any doctrine of mine stands. For I do not know what arguments mean in reference to any expression of a thought. I delight in telling what I think; but if you ask me how I dare say so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless of mortal men. I do not even see that either of these questions admits of an answer. So that, in the present droll posture of my affairs, when I see myself suddenly raised into the importance of a heretic, I am very uneasy when I advert to the supposed duties of such a personage, who is to make good his thesis against all comers.

I certainly shall do no such thing. I shall read what you and other good men write, as I have always done, glad when you speak my thoughts, and skipping the page that has nothing for me. I shall go on just as before, seeing whatever 1 can, and telling what I see, and, I suppose, with the same fortune that has hitherto attended me; the joy of finding that my abler and better brothers, who work with the sympathy of society, loving and beloved, do now and then unexpectedly confirm my perception, and find that my nonsense is only their own thought in motley. And so I am your affectionate servant,

R. W. EMERSON. We get another glimpse of Emerson in those stirring days from the Journal of Dr. Francis:

September, 1838. Spent the night at Mr. Emerson's. When we were alone he talked of his discourse at the Divinity School, and of the

obloquy it had drawn upon him. He is perfectly quiet amid the storm. To my objections and remarks he gave the most candid replies, though we could not agree on some points. The more I see of this beautiful spirit, the more I revere and love him; such a calm, steady, simple soul, always looking for truth, and living in wisdom, and in love for man and goodness, I have never met. Mr. Emerson is not one whose vocation it is to state processes of argument; he is a seer, who reports in sweet and significant words what he sees. He looks into the infinite of truth, and records what there passes before his vision. If you see it as he does, you will recognize him for a gifted teacher; if not, there is little or nothing to be said about it. But do not brand him with the names of visionary, or fanatic or pretender; he is no such thing—he is a true, Godful man, though in his love for the ideal he disregards too much the actual.

We may well be thankful to foolish Francis that he did not blab his own commonplaces altogether, and leave Emerson standing in the dark, wholly dumb. Such men teach us the worth of a Boswell. But some value attaches to Francis's report, since he was probably a mere echo of Emerson's notions about himself, as we gather from the similarity between Francis's record and Emerson's letter to Ware a few weeks later.

In the lecture on "The Transcendentalist," Emerson reports that Kant showed

There is a very important class of ideas, or imperative forms, which did not come by experience but through which experience is acquired; that these are intuitions of the mind itself, and he denominated them transcendental forms. The extraordinary profoundness and precision of that man's thinking have given vogue to his nomenclature in Europe and America to that extent, that whatever belongs to the class of intuitive thought is popularly called at the present day Transcendental.

Although, as we have said, there is no pure Transcendentalist, yet the tendency to respect the intuitions, and to give them, at least in our creed, all authority over our experience, has deeply coloured the conversation and poetry of the present day; and the history and genius of religion in these times, though impure, and as yet not incarnated in any powerful individual, will be the history of this tendency.

We now have all the materials needed in order to see wherein the new religious views of Emerson are in conflict with the Christian faith. Emerson rejects written revelation as impossible and unnecessary, denies that the Church is the pillar and ground of truth, repudiates the peculiar divinity, supreme religious authority, and redeeming work of Christ, and brands as encroachment any attempt at enforcing the claims of Christian creeds. He affirms that the soul is the only oracle of truth; that it has access to all truth; that its clear decisions are of final authority; and that it perceives truth by direct contemplation or intuition, and not by logical process. Hence, it appears that Emerson had

broken totally with Christianity on the vital question, What is the ultimate authority in religion? His repudiation of arguments, as of no force in regard to the questions raised in the Address, is worthy of special attention. It shows that he rests his assertions on intuition as their sufficient basis; for surely arguments are of great consequence in all matters which do not fall under the immediate notice of the soul. He not only represents man as an inlet into all reason, but tells him, "In yourself slumbers all reason," and makes it a duty to worship the soul. "Nature and man are of one root-and that root-Is it not the soul of his soul?" "I conceive man as always spoken to from behind, and unable to turn and see the speaker. In all the millions who have heard the voice, none ever saw the face. That well-known

voice speaks all languages, governs all men, and none ever caught a glimpse of its form. If a man will exactly obey it, it will adopt him, so that he shall not any longer separate it from himself in his thought-he shall seem to be it; he shall be it. His health and greatness consist in his being the channel through which heaven flows to earth; in short, in the fullness with which an ecstatical state takes place in him. It is pitiful to be an artist, when, by forbearing to be an artist, we might be vessels filled with divine overflowings, enriched by the circulations of omniscience and omnipotence. Are there not moments in the history of heaven when the human race was not counted by individuals, but only as the Influenced, was God in distribution, was God rushing into multiform benefit?" In one place he complains "that the community in which we live will hardly bear to be told that every man should be open to ecstacy or a divine illumination, and his daily walk elevated by communion with the spiritual world; " in another he boasts that "it almost seems as if what was aforetime spoken fabulously and hieroglyphically was now spoken plainly, the doctrine, namely, of the indwelling of the Creator in man." In another place he distinctly repudiates the ancient religion, and says: "I stand here to say, Let us worship the mighty and transcendent soul."

These sentences contain the pith and marrow of the Emersonian doctrines. The most careful analysis of what he published before the first series of the essays appeared will reveal no other general principals. They are stated with the utmost beauty, and with all possible variations of emphasis; the results which are ultimately to ensue from their adoption are also stated :

We are to revise the whole of our social structure, the State, the school, religion, marriage, trade, science, and explore their foundations in our own nature; we are to see that the world not only fitted the former men, but fits us, and to clear ourselves of every usage which