Mr. Emerson did not wish to have his sermons published. All that was
worth saving in them, he said, would be found in the Essays. Yet it
seemed best, to Mr. Cabot and to Mr. Emerson’s family, that this one
sermon should be preserved. A record of a turning-point in his life, it
showed at once his thought and his character; for he not only gives the
reasons why he believes the rite not authoritatively enjoined, and hence
recommends its modification or discontinuance, but with serenity and
sweetness renders back his trust into his people’s hands, since he cannot
see his way longer to exercise it as most of them desire.
In the month of June, 1832, Mr. Emerson had proposed to the church,
apparently with hope of their approval, that the Communion be observed
only as a festival of commemoration, without the use of the elements.
The committee to whom the proposal was referred made a report expressing
confidence in him, but declining to advise the change, as the matter was
one which they could not properly be called upon to decide.
The question then came back to the pastor, whether he was willing to
remain in his place and administer the rite in the usual form.
He went alone to the White Mountains, then seldom visited, to consider
the grave question whether he was prepared, rather than to continue the
performance of a part of his priestly office from which his instincts and
beliefs recoiled, to sacrifice a position of advantage for usefulness
to his people to whom he was bound by many ties, and in preparation for
which he had spent long years. He wrote, at Conway, New Hampshire: “Here
among the mountains the pinions of thought should be strong, and one
should see the errors of men from a calmer height of love and wisdom.”
His diary at Ethan Allan Crawford’s contains his doubts and questionings,
which Mr. Cabot has given in his Memoir. Yet there was but one answer for
him, and after a fortnight, he came back clear in his mind to give his
decision, embodied in this sermon, to his people. On the same day that it
was preached, he formally resigned his pastorate. The church was loth to
part with him. It was hoped that some other arrangement might be made.
Mr. Cabot learned that “several meetings were held and the proprietors of
pews were called in, as having ‘an undoubted right to retain Mr. Emerson
as their pastor, without reference to the opposition of the church.’ At
length, after two adjournments and much discussion, it was decided by
thirty votes against twenty-four to accept his resignation. It was voted
at the same time to continue his salary for the present.”
Thus Mr. Emerson and his people parted in all kindness, but, as Mr. Cabot
truly said, their difference of views on this rite “was in truth only the
symptom of a deeper difference which would in any case sooner or later
have made it impossible for him to retain his office; a disagreement
not so much about particular doctrines or observances as about their
sanction, the authority on which all doctrines and observances rest.”
In the farewell letter which Mr. Emerson wrote to the people of his
church, he said:—
“I rejoice to believe that my ceasing to exercise the pastoral office
among you does not make any real change in our spiritual relation to each
other. Whatever is most desirable and excellent therein remains to us.
For, truly speaking, whoever provokes me to a good act or thought has
given me a pledge of his fidelity to virtue,—he has come under bonds to
adhere to that cause to which we are jointly attached. And so I say to
all you who have been my counsellors and coöperators in our Christian
walk, that I am wont to see in your faces the seals and certificates
of our mutual obligations. If we have conspired from week to week in
the sympathy and expression of devout sentiments; if we have received
together the unspeakable gift of God’s truth; if we have studied together
the sense of any divine word; or striven together in any charity; or
conferred together for the relief or instruction of any brother; if
together we have laid down the dead in a pious hope; or held up the babe
into the baptism of Christianity; above all, if we have shared in any
habitual acknowledgment of the benignant God, whose omnipresence raises
and glorifies the meanest offices and the lowest ability, and opens
heaven in every heart that worships him,—then indeed we are united, we
are mutually debtors to each other of faith and hope, engaged to persist
and confirm each other’s hearts in obedience to the Gospel. We shall not
feel that the nominal changes and little separations of this world can
release us from the strong cordage of this spiritual bond. And I entreat
you to consider how truly blessed will have been our connection if, in
this manner, the memory of it shall serve to bind each one of us more
strictly to the practice of our several duties.”
[1] _Page 18, note 1._ The doctrine of the offices of Jesus, even in
the Unitarianism of Dr. Channing, was never congenial to Mr. Emerson’s
mind. He notes the same with regard to his father, and even to his Aunt
Mary, in spite of her Calvinism. Any interposed personality between the
Creator and the created was repugnant to him. Even in March, 1831, he is
considering in his journal that his hearers will say, “To what purpose
is this attempt to explain away so safe and holy a doctrine as that of
the Holy Spirit? Why unsettle or disturb a faith which presents to many
minds a helpful medium by which they approach the idea of God?” and
he answers, “And this question I will meet. It is because I think the
popular views of this principle are pernicious, because it does put a
medium, because it removes the idea of God from the mind. It leaves some
events, some things, some thoughts, out of the power of Him who causes
every event, every flower, every thought. The tremendous idea, as I may
well call it, of God is screened from the soul.... And least of all can
we believe—Reason will not let us—that the presiding Creator commands all
matter and never descends into the secret chambers of the Soul. There he
is most present. The Soul rules over matter. Matter may pass away like a
mote in the sunbeam, may be absorbed into the immensity of God, as a mist
is absorbed into the heat of the Sun—but the soul is the kingdom of God,
the abode of love, of truth, of virtue.”
[2] _Page 19, note 1._ In the hope of satisfying those of his people who
held to the letter of the Scriptural Law, Mr. Emerson made the foregoing
clear statement with regard to the authority for the rite, from the
professional point of view. It seems quite unlike his usual method, and
there is little doubt that in it appears the influence of his elder
brother, William, whose honest doubts had led him to abandon even earlier
the profession of his fathers. In the introductory note to the chapter on
Goethe, in _Representative Men_, is given an account of his unsuccessful
pilgrimage to Weimar, in hopes that the great mind of Germany could solve
these doubts. There is a letter still preserved, written by William, soon
after his return, to his venerable kinsman at Concord, Dr. Ripley, in
which he explains with great clearness his own reasons for not believing
that the Communion rite was enjoined by Jesus for perpetual observance.
The argument on scriptural grounds there clearly stated is substantially
the same as that which his younger brother makes use of in the beginning
of this sermon. Thus far he has spoken of outward authority; from this
point onward he speaks from within—the way native to him.
[3] _Page 25, note 1._ Mr. Emerson left the struggles of the Past behind,
and did not care to recall them. Thus, writing of Lucretia Mott, whom he
met when giving a course of lectures in Philadelphia, in January, 1843,
he said:—
“Me she taxed with living out of the world, and I was not much flattered
that her interest in me respected my rejection of an ordinance, sometime,
somewhere. Also yesterday—for Philadelphian ideas, like love, do creep
where they cannot go—I was challenged on the subject of the Lord’s
Supper, and with great slowness and pain was forced to recollect the
grounds of my dissent in that particular. You may be sure I was very
tardy with my texts.”
Mr. Emerson’s journal during the period of trial and decision, in the
mountains, shows that he was reading with great interest the life of
George Fox. The simplicity of the Society of Friends, their aversion to
forms and trust in the inward light, always appealed to him.