MATT. vi. 23.--_If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of
light._
It is natural and fit that many pulpits to-day should take for their
theme the character and influence of the great thinker and poet who has
just left us; for every such soul is a new revelation of God's truth
and love. Each opens the gateway between our lower world of earthly
care and earthly pleasure into a higher heavenly world of spirit. Such
men lift our lives to a higher plane, and convince us that we, also,
belong to God, to eternity, to heaven. And few, in our day, have been
such mediators of heavenly things to mankind as Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Last Sunday afternoon, when the town of Concord was mourning through
all its streets for the loss of its beloved and revered citizen; when
the humblest cottage had on its door the badge of sorrow; when great
numbers came from abroad to testify their affection and respect, that
which impressed me the most was the inevitable response of the human
heart to whatever is true and good. Cynics may tell us that men are
duped by charlatans, led by selfish demagogues, incapable of knowing
honor and truth when set before them; that they always stone their
prophets and crucify their saviors; that they have eyes, and do not
see; ears, and never hear. This is all true for a time; but inevitably,
by a law as sure as that which governs the movements of the planets,
the souls of men turn at last toward what is true, generous, and noble.
The prophets and teachers of the race may be stoned by one generation,
but their monuments are raised by the next. They are misunderstood and
misrepresented to-day, but to-morrow they become the accredited leaders
of their time. Jesus, who knew well that he would be rejected and
murdered by a people blind and deaf to his truth, also knew that this
truth would sooner or later break down all opposition, and make him
master and king of the world. "I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men
unto me."
Last Sunday afternoon, as the grateful procession followed their
teacher to his grave in the Concord cemetery, the harshness of our
spring seemed to relent, and Nature became tender toward him who had
loved her so well. I thought of his words, "The visible heavens and
earth sympathized with Jesus." The town where "the embattled farmers
stood;" where the musket was discharged which opened the War of the
Revolution--the gun of which Lafayette said, "It was the alarm-gun of
the world;" the town of Hawthorne's "Old Manse," and of his grave, now
that Emerson also sleeps in its quiet valley, has received an added
glory. It has become one of the "Meccas of the mind."
Let me describe the mental and spiritual condition of New England
when Emerson appeared. Calvinism, with its rigorous dogmatism, was
slowly dying, and had been succeeded by a calm and somewhat formal
rationalism. Locke was still the master in the realm of thought;
Addison and Blair in literary expression. In poetry, the school of Pope
was engaged in conflict with that of Byron and his contemporaries.
Wordsworth had led the way to a deeper view of nature; but Wordsworth
could scarcely be called a popular writer. In theology a certain
literalism prevailed, and the doctrines of Christianity were inferred
from counting and weighing texts on either side. Not the higher reason,
with its intuition of eternal ideas, but the analytic understanding,
with its logical methods, was considered to be the ruler in the world
of thought. There was more of culture than of intellectual life, more
of good habits than of moral enthusiasm. Religion had become very
much of an external institution. Christianity consisted in holding
rational or orthodox opinions, going regularly to church, and listening
every Sunday to a certain number of prayers, hymns, and sermons.
These sermons, with some striking exceptions, were rather tame and
mechanical. In Boston, it is true, Buckminster had appeared,--that soul
of flame which soon wore to decay its weak body. The consummate orator
Edward Everett had followed him in Brattle Square pulpit. Above all,
Channing had looked, with a new spiritual insight, into the truths of
religion and morality. But still the mechanical treatment prevailed in
a majority of the churches of New England, and was considered, on the
whole, to be the wisest and safest method. There was an unwritten creed
of morals, literature, and social thought to which all were expected
to conform. There was little originality and much repetition. On all
subjects there were certain formulas which it was considered proper
to repeat. "Thou art a blessed fellow," says one of Shakespeare's
characters, "to think as other people think. Not a man's thought in the
world keeps the roadway better than thine." The thought of New England
kept the roadway. Of course, at all times a large part of the belief
of the community is derived from memory, custom, and imitation; but
in those days, if I remember them aright, it was regarded as a kind
of duty to think as every one else thought; a sort of delinquency, or
weakness, to differ from the majority.
If the movements of thought are now much more independent and
spontaneous; if to-day traditions have lost their despotic power; if
even those who hold an orthodox creed are able to treat it as a dead
letter, respectable for its past uses, but by no means binding on us
now, this is largely owing to the manly position taken by Emerson. And
yet, let it be observed, this influence was not exercised by attacking
old opinions, by argument, by denial, by criticism. Theodore Parker
did all this, but his influence on thought has been far less than that
of Emerson. Parker was a hero who snuffed the battle afar off, and
flung himself, sword in hand, into the thick of the conflict. But,
much as we love and reverence his honesty, his immense activity, his
devotion to truth and right, we must admit to-day, standing by these
two friendly graves, that the power of Emerson to soften the rigidity
of time-hardened belief was far the greater. It is the old fable of
the storm and sun. The violent attacks of the tempest only made the
traveler cling more closely to his cloak; the genial heat of the sun
compelled him to throw it aside. In all Emerson's writings there is
scarcely any argument. He attacks no man's belief; he simply states
his own. His method is always positive, constructive. He opens the
windows and lets in more light. He is no man's opponent; the enemy
of no one. He states what he sees, and that which he does not see he
passes by. He was often attacked, but never replied. His answer was
to go forward, and say something else. He did not care for what he
called the "bugbear consistency." If to-day he said what seemed like
Pantheism, and to-morrow he saw some truth which seemed to reveal a
divine personality, a supreme will, he uttered the last, as he had
declared the first, always faithful to the light within. He left it to
the spirit of truth to reconcile such apparent contradictions. He was
like his own humble-bee--
"Seeing only what is fair,
Sipping only what is sweet;
Thou dost mock at fate and care,
Leave the chaff and take the wheat."
By this method of positive statement he not only saved the time usually
wasted in argument, attack, reply, rejoinder, but he gave us the
substance of Truth, instead of its form. Logic and metaphysic reveal
no truths; they merely arrange in order what the higher faculties of
the mind have made known. Hence the speedy oblivion which descends on
polemics of all sorts. The great theological debaters, where are they?
The books of Horsley and McGee are buried in the same grave with those
of Belsham and Priestley, their old opponents. The bitter attacks on
Christianity by Voltaire and Paine are inurned in the same dark and
forgotten vaults with the equally bitter defenses of Christianity by
its numerous champions. Argument may often be necessary, but no truth
is slain by argument; no error can be kept alive by it. Emerson is an
eminent example of a man who never replied to attacks, but went on
his way, and saw at last all opposition hushed, all hostility at an
end. He devoted his powers to giving to his readers his insights,
knowing that these alone feed the soul. Thus men came to him to be
fed. His sheep heard his voice. Those who felt themselves better
for his instruction followed him. He collected around him thus an
ever-increasing band of disciples, until in England, in Germany, in all
lands where men read and think, he is looked up to as a master. Many of
these disciples were persons of rare gifts and powers, like Margaret
Fuller, Theodore Parker, George Ripley, Hawthorne. Many others were
unknown to fame, yet deeply sensible of the blessings they had received
from their prophet and seer of the nineteenth century. For this was his
office. He was a man who saw. He had the vision and the faculty divine.
He sat near the fountain-head, and tasted the waters of Helicon in
their source.
His first little book, a duodecimo of less than a hundred pages, called
"Nature," published in 1836, indicates all these qualities. It begins
thus:--
"Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It
writes biographies, histories, criticisms. The foregoing generations
beheld God and Nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should
not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not
we have a poetry and philosophy of insight, and not of tradition, and
a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?... The
sun shines to-day also.... Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask
which are unanswerable."
This was his first doctrine, that of self-reliance. He taught that
God had given to every man the power to see with his own eyes, think
with his own mind, believe what seemed to him true, plant himself on
his instincts, and, as he says, "call a pop-gun a pop-gun, though
the ancient and honorable of the earth declare it to be the crack of
doom." This was manly and wholesome doctrine. It might, no doubt, be
abused, and lead some persons to think they were men of original genius
when they were only eccentric. It may have led others to attack all
institutions and traditions, as though, if a thing were old, it was
necessarily false. But Emerson himself was the best antidote to such
extravagance. To a youth who brought to him a manuscript confuting
Plato he replied, "When you attack the king you ought to be sure to
kill him." But his protest against the prevailing conventionalism was
healthy, and his call on all "to be themselves" was inspiring.
The same doctrine is taught in the introductory remarks of the editors
of the "Dial." They say they have obeyed with joy the strong current of
thought which has led many sincere persons to reprobate that rigor of
conventions which is turning them to stone, which renounces hope and
only looks backward, which suspects improvement, and holds nothing so
much in horror as the dreams of youth. This work, the "Dial," made a
great impression, out of all proportion to its small circulation. By
the elders it was cordially declared to be unintelligible mysticism,
and so, no doubt, much of it was. Those inside, its own friends, often
made as much fun of it as those outside. Yet it opened the door for
many new and noble thoughts, and was a wild bugle-note, a reveillé,
calling on all generous hearts to look toward the coming day.
Here is an extract from one of Emerson's letters from Europe as early
as March, 1833. It is dated Naples:--
"And what if it be Naples! It is only the same world of cakes and ale,
of man, and truth, and folly. I will not be imposed upon by a name.
It is so easy to be overawed by names that it is hard to keep one's
judgment upright, and be pleased only after your own way. Baiæ and
Pausilippo sound so big that we are ready to surrender at discretion,
and not stickle for our private opinion against what seems the human
race. But here's for the plain old Adam, the simple, genuine self
against the whole world."
Again he says: "Nothing so fatal to genius as genius. Mr. Taylor,
author of 'Van Artevelde,' is a man of great intellect, but by study of
Shakespeare is forced to reproduce Shakespeare."
Thus the first great lesson taught by Mr. Emerson was "self-reliance."
And the second was like it, though apparently opposed to it,
"God-reliance." Not really opposed to it, for it meant this: God is
near to your mind and heart, as he was to the mind and heart of the
prophets and inspired men of the past. God is ready to inspire you also
if you will trust in him. In the little book called "Nature" he says:--
"The highest is present to the soul of man; the dread universal
essence, which is not wisdom, or love, or power, or beauty, but all
in one, and each entirely, is that for which all things exist, and
by which they are. Believe that throughout nature spirit is present;
that it is one, that it does not act upon us from without, but through
ourselves.... As a plant on the earth, so man rests on the bosom
of God, nourished by unfailing fountains, and drawing at his need
inexhaustible power."
And so in his poem called "The Problem" he teaches that all religions
are from God; that all the prophets and sibyls and lofty souls that
have sung psalms, written scripture, and built the temples and
cathedrals of men, were inspired by a spirit above their own. He puts
aside the shallow explanation that any of the great religions ever came
from priestcraft:--
"Out from the heart of Nature rolled
The burdens of the Bible old;
The litanies of nations came,
Like the volcano's tongue of flame,
Up from the burning core below,
The canticles of love and woe.
"The word unto the prophet spoken
Was writ on tables yet unbroken;
The word by seers or sibyls told,
In groves of oak or fanes of gold,
Still floats upon the moving wind,
Still whispers to the willing mind.
One accent of the Holy Ghost
The heedless world hath never lost."
In all that Emerson says of nature he is equally devout. He sees God
in it all. It is to him full of a divine charm. "In the woods," he
says, "is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God a decorum
and sanctity reigns, and we return to reason and faith." "The currents
of the Universal Being circulate through me. I am part and particle of
God." For saying such things as these he was accused of Pantheism. And
he was a Pantheist; yet only as Paul was a Pantheist when he said, "In
Him we live and move and have our being;" "From whom and through whom
are all things;" "The fullness of him who filleth all in all." Emerson
was, in his view of nature, at one with Wordsworth, who said:--
"The clouds were touched,
And in their silent faces he could read
Unutterable love. Sensation, soul, and form
All melted into him; they swallowed up
His animal being; in them did he live,
And by them did he live; they were his life.
In such high hour
Of visitation from the living God,
Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired."
Emerson has thus been to our day the prophet of God in the soul, in
nature, in life. He has stood for spirit against matter. Darwin, his
great peer, the serene master in the school of science, was like him
in this,--that he also said what he saw and no more. He also taught
what God showed to him in the outward world of sense, as Emerson what
God showed in the inward world of spirit. Amid the stormy disputes of
their time, each of these men went his own way, his eye single and his
whole body full of light. The work of Darwin was the easier, for he
floated with the current of the time, which sets at present so strongly
toward the study of things seen and temporal. But the work of Emerson
was more noble, for he stands for things unseen and eternal,--for a
larger religion, a higher faith, a nobler worship. This strong and
tender soul has done its work and gone on its way. But he will always
fill a niche of the universal Church as a New England prophet. He had
the purity of the New England air in his moral nature, a touch of the
shrewd Yankee wit in his speech, and the long inheritance of ancestral
faith incarnate and consolidated in blood and brain. But to this were
added qualities which were derived from some far-off realm of human
life: an Oriental cast of thought, a touch of mediæval mysticism, and
a vocabulary brought from books unknown to our New England literature.
No commonplaces of language are to be found in his writings, and though
he read the older writers, he does not imitate them. He, also, like
his humble-bee, has gathered contributions from remotest fields, and
enriched our language with a new and picturesque speech all his own.
Let us, then, be grateful for this best of God's gifts,--another soul
sent to us filled with divine light. Thus we learn anew how full are
nature and life of God:--
"Ever fresh the broad creation,
A divine improvisation;
From the heart of God proceeds
A single will, a million deeds."
One word concerning Mr. Emerson's relation to Christ and to
Christianity. The distinction which he made between Jesus and other
teachers was, no doubt, one of degree and not one of kind. He put no
great gulf of supernatural powers, origin, or office between Christ
and the ethnic prophets. But his reverence for Jesus was profound and
tender. Nor did he object to the word "Christian" or to the Christian
Church. In recent years, at least, he not unfrequently attended the
services of the Unitarian Church in his town, and I have met him at
Unitarian conventions, a benign and revered presence.
In the cemetery at Bonn, on the Rhine, is the tomb of Niebuhr, the
historian, a man of somewhat like type, as I judge, to our Emerson. At
least, some texts on his monument would be admirably appropriate for
any stone which may be placed over the remains of the American prophet
and poet in the sweet valley of tombs in Concord.
One of these texts was from Sirach xlvii. 14, 17:
"How wise wast thou in thy youth, and as a flood filled with
understanding!
Thy soul covered the whole earth, and thou filledst it with dark
parables.
Thy name went far unto the islands, and for thy peace thou wast
beloved.
The countries marvelled at thee for thy songs and proverbs and
parables and interpretations."
And equally appropriate would be this Horatian line, also on Niebuhr's
monument:--
"Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus tam cari capitis."
From a lifelong friend of Emerson I have just received a letter
containing these words, which, better than most descriptions, give the
character of his soul:--
"And so the white wings have spread, and the great soul has left us.
''Tis death is dead; not he.'
He had no vanity, no selfishness; no greed, no hate; none of the
weights that drag on common mortals. His life was an illumination; a
large, fair light; the Pharos of New England, as in other days our dear
brother called him. And this light shone further and wider the longer
it burned."