Ralph Waldo Emerson by Oliver Wendell Holmes
page 102 of 449 (22%)
page 102 of 449 (22%)
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When Emerson came to what his earlier ancestors would have called the "practical application," some of his young hearers must have been startled at the style of his address. "Yourself a new--born bard of the Holy Ghost, cast behind you all conformity, and acquaint men at first hand with Deity. Look to it first and only, that fashion, custom, authority, pleasure, and money are nothing to you,--are not bandages over your eyes, that you cannot see,--but live with the privilege of the immeasurable mind." Emerson recognizes two inestimable advantages as the gift of Christianity; first the Sabbath,--hardly a Christian institution,--and secondly the institution of preaching. He spoke not only eloquently, but with every evidence of deep sincerity and conviction. He had sacrificed an enviable position to that inner voice of duty which he now proclaimed as the sovereign law over all written or spoken words. But he was assailing the cherished beliefs of those before him, and of Christendom generally; not with hard or bitter words, not with sarcasm or levity, rather as one who felt himself charged with a message from the same divinity who had inspired the prophets and evangelists of old with whatever truth was in their messages. He might be wrong, but his words carried the evidence of his own serene, unshaken confidence that the spirit of all truth was with him. Some of his audience, at least, must have felt the contrast between his utterances and the formal discourses they had so long listened to, and said to themselves, "he speaks 'as one having authority, and not as the Scribes.'" Such teaching, however, could not be suffered to go unchallenged. Its |
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