organizations may secondarily grow. In these lectures, however,
as I have already said, the immediate personal experiences will
amply fill our time, and we shall hardly consider theology or
ecclesiasticism at all.

We escape much controversial matter by this arbitrary definition
of our field. But, still, a chance of controversy comes up over
the word "divine," if we take the definition in too narrow a
sense. There are systems of thought which the world usually
calls religious, and yet which do not positively assume a God.
Buddhism is in this case. Popularly, of course, the Buddha
himself stands in place of a God; but in strictness the
Buddhistic system is atheistic. Modern transcendental idealism,
Emersonianism, for instance, also seems to let God evaporate into
abstract Ideality. Not a deity in concreto, not a superhuman
person, but the immanent divinity in things, the essentially
spiritual structure of the universe, is the object of the
transcendentalist cult. In that address to the graduating class
at Divinity College in 1838 which made Emerson famous, the frank
expression of this worship of mere abstract laws was what made
the scandal of the performance.

"These laws," said the speaker, "execute themselves. They are
out of time, out of space, and not subject to circumstance:
Thus, in the soul of man there is a justice whose retributions
are instant and entire. He who does a good deed is instantly
ennobled. He who does a mean deed is by the action itself
contracted. He who puts off impurity thereby puts on purity. If
a man is at heart just, then in so far is he God; the safety of
God, the immortality of God, the majesty of God, do enter into