fragrant. And the unique impression of Jesus upon mankind, whose
name is not so much written as ploughed into the history of this
world, is proof of the subtle virtue of this infusion."[10]

[10] Miscellanies, 1868, p. 120 (abridged).



Such is the Emersonian religion. The universe has a divine soul
of order, which soul is moral, being also the soul within the
soul of man. But whether this soul of the universe be a mere
quality like the eye's brilliancy or the skin's softness, or
whether it be a self-conscious life like the eye's seeing or the
skin's feeling, is a decision that never unmistakably appears in
Emerson's pages. It quivers on the boundary of these things,
sometimes leaning one way sometimes the other, to suit the
literary rather than the philosophic need. Whatever it is,
though, it is active. As much as if it were a God, we can trust
it to protect all ideal interests and keep the world's balance
straight. The sentences in which Emerson, to the very end, gave
utterance to this faith are as fine as anything in literature:
"If you love and serve men, you cannot by any hiding or stratagem
escape the remuneration. Secret retributions are always
restoring the level, when disturbed, of the divine justice. It
is impossible to tilt the beam. All the tyrants and proprietors
and monopolists of the world in vain set their shoulders to heave
the bar. Settles forevermore the ponderous equator to its line,
and man and mote, and star and sun, must range to it, or be
pulverized by the recoil."[11]