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—

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:—

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:—

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:—

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:

And equally appropriate would be this Horatian line, also on Niebuhr's monument:—

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.

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."