sacred vessel. When people who were sure they had drained that vessel,
and assimilated its contents, attacked him, he was irresponsive or
impassive, and yielded to them no juicy thought; so they pronounced him
dry or empty. Yet all of Emerson's religious teaching led straight to
God,--not to a withdrawn creator, or anthropomorphic judge or king, but
to the all-informing, all-sustaining soul of the universe.

It was a prophetic quality of Emerson's religious teaching that he
sought to obliterate the distinction between secular and sacred. For him
all things were sacred, just as the universe was religious. We see an
interesting fruition of Emerson's sowing in the nature of the means of
influence, which organized churches and devout people have, in these
later days, been compelled to resort to. Thus the Catholic Church keeps
its hold on its natural constituency quite as much by schools,
gymnasiums, hospitals, entertainments, and social parades as it does by
its rites and sacraments. The Protestant Churches maintain in city slums
"settlements," which use the secular rather than the so-called sacred
methods. The fight against drunkenness, and the sexual vice and crimes
of violence which follow in its train, is most successfully maintained
by eliminating its physical causes and providing mechanical and social
protections.

For Emerson inspiration meant not the rare conveyance of supernatural
power to an individual, but the constant incoming into each man of the
"divine soul which also inspires all men." He believed in the worth of
the present hour:--

"Future or Past no richer secret folds,
O friendless Present! than thy bosom holds."