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 /P\ 
 
 OUR NEW RELIGIONS. 5 ^S' 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON; 
 
 HIS WRITINGS AND OPINIONS 
 
 A LECTURE 
 
 BY JOHN C. OEIKIE 
 
 ]n Afftmind all creation ioduly respected 
 
 As parts of himself— just a little projected : 
 
 And 7ie> willinR to worship the stars and the son. 
 
 A convert to— nothing but Emerson. 
 
 Life. Nature, Love. God. and affairs of that sort, 
 
 He looks at as merely Ideas : in short 
 
 As if they were fossils stnck round in a cabinet, 
 
 < »f such vast extent that our earth's a mere dab in it • 
 Composed Just as he is inclined to conjecture her 
 Namely, one part p« e earth, ninety-nine parts pure lecturer." 
 
 James Russui Lowell. 
 
 PtJBLIBHBD BY REQUEST. 
 
 TORONTO: 
 JOHN C. O E I K I K. 
 
 «1, KING STREET. 
 
 1859. 
 
»Vr 
 
g;6*«g*-^.-=rt^Tn.i^f^:j^,y^|i,l^.^j^^^ 
 
 Toronto, 2Htli January, 1859. 
 
 John C. Gkikik, Esy. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 'I 
 
 Believiug that the publication of the Lecture you lately 
 delivero.1 in the Temperance Hall, avouIcI be pro.luctive of n.u.h good, 
 we respectfully request you to allow the same to be published. 
 
 We are, Dear Sir, 
 
 Yours truly. 
 
 Adam Wilson, Q.O. (Mayor.) 
 
 A. LiLLIK, D. D. 
 
 John JENNiN(i.«, d. d. 
 R. A. Fyfk, I). I). 
 
 J. McMuRKICH, 
 And otLum. 
 
 'f 
 
 H 
 
I; 
 
1 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON: 
 
 lis Writings a'.b ©jinians. 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson is the son of a Unitarian Cleriryman 
 of Boston, and was born about 1803. After sjraduatintr at Howard 
 College, he became the pastor of a Unitarian Congregation in his 
 native city. But the state of the religious body to which he 
 belonged was, at that time, as now, so unsettled, after the movement 
 induced by the separation from it of the orthodox Churches in 
 Massachusetts a few years before, that uninquiring ease was 
 impossible in any of its ministers who had ambition or earnestness. 
 There arc two doors opening from the chambers of doubt, one 
 towards still darker and wider doubt; the other, towards the peaceful 
 landscape of Faith, and the choice of either determines the future 
 life. Like Blanco White or Francis N<nvman, Mr. Emerson, un- 
 happily for him.self and others, chose tho wrong one. and. **assing 
 out int/) a sky in which all his old marks and certainties had h come 
 ccnfused and bewildering, succeeding years have found him still 
 further from th:>t only horizon of trust and love where the spirit 
 finds both earth and heaven alike inviting its repose. \ connection 
 of seven or eight years was sufficient to make his hearers and him- 
 self alike willing to dissolve their relations, the received worship and 
 creed gradually falling far behind iMr. Emerson's continual sniftings. 
 Free, at last, Mr. Emerson abandoned a profession which tramel- 
 led him, eyen in a denomination so liberal to the views of its teachers, 
 
r 
 
 I 
 
 and turning altogether from the pulpit, retired to the village of 
 Concord, where he gave himself up to the investigation of theology, 
 morals, and philosophy. Articles in the ''North American Review" 
 on the great writers and artistH of Kuropc, and lectures during the 
 winter in Boston, were, in these years, his principal communications 
 with the world of letters. In 1836, however, he came upon a larger 
 Btage by the publication of an Essay on Nature, in which the Pan- 
 theistic doctrines were urged to their extreme results, and a religion 
 of Nature was sought to be substituted for revelation. Its novelty 
 and audacity no less than a certain air of greatness in the style, and 
 an oracular certainty assumed in its statements, attracted attention. 
 He had now taken ground openly as the Apostle of an apparently 
 new faith, and as such secured the position and prestige which are 
 always conceded to those who thus force on us their own individu- 
 ality. It is in the nature of men to follow rather than to lead, and 
 to pay deference, and, in a measure, yield, to whatever asserts itself 
 with sufficient force and persistency. 
 
 Since his successful debut in his native country, ^Ir. Emerson has 
 
 had the benefit of an introduction to the British public in connection 
 
 with two courses of lectures — the latterof which, on English Traits, 
 
 is the latest of his publications of any note, so far as I am aware. 
 
 His published works comprise six volumes — one on Representative 
 
 Men — two of Essays — one of Miscellanies — one of Poems, and his 
 
 book on England. In the merely artistic aspect of his writings, 
 
 Mr. Emerson has various excellencies, and no less various defects. 
 
 His language is pure and idiomatic, and his expression has often a 
 
 vigour and a happy turn which are striking and forcible. Aside from 
 
 his peculiar opinions he criticises at once with a breadth of view 
 
 and penetration of the spirit of his subject. But he mars his best 
 
 pages with an effort at epigrammatic point which often fails ; he 
 
 cloaks in oracular words very ordinary facts, and deals in undefined 
 
 hints and vague obscurities, through which no meaning looms to even 
 
 the most attentive. His reputation, I apprehend, rests as much on 
 
 these defects as on his merits, for the standard of criticism which 
 
 Sir Thomas More tells us prevailed in Utopia, is not less in vogue 
 
 ;* 
 
 * 
 
 X 
 
¥% 
 
 1 
 
 (Tillage of 
 thcolopy, 
 
 Review" 
 uring the 
 iniciitions 
 n a larger 
 
 the Pan- 
 a religion 
 8 novelty 
 stylo, and 
 attention, 
 ipparently 
 which are 
 
 individu- 
 I lead, and 
 jerts iteelf 
 
 nerson has 
 3onnection 
 ish Traits, 
 am aware, 
 •esentativc 
 s, and his 
 i writings, 
 J8 defects. 
 18 often a 
 Vside from 
 
 h of view 
 Irs his best 
 fails ; he 
 
 undefined 
 Inis to even 
 much on 
 
 sm which 
 in vogue 
 
 8 
 
 elsewhere, to think an author original and profound, in proportion as 
 he is incomprrhensiblc. 
 
 Mr. Emerson is cminontly a religious :.'ithor, that is, religious — 
 as ho reads religion. It is this characteristic which leads nu; t(» 
 address you to-night, for as his zeal is, in my opinion, altogether mis- 
 directed, and is calculated in proportion to its success to do lasting 
 injury, a review of his doctrines, separated from the decking of words 
 in which they are set forth, and an examination of their tendencies, 
 is desirable. There is a fashion in the scepticisms of each genera- 
 tion as in its literature and dress, and that which Mr. Emerson 
 represents is at present in vogue. He has transplanted to this conti- 
 nent, a religion ot .sentiment and man-worship which was dying out m 
 its native soil, and seeks, with the aid of some fellow-workers, to get it 
 acclimated amongst us, and, in a measure, has succeeded, for a time. 
 The Pantheistic tendencies of the present day have become a topic 
 for the platform and pulpit. From their head-quarters in Boston, 
 its Apostles, including Mr. Emerson, seek to pervade our literature 
 with its spirit ; and by introducing it mildly in their public ap- 
 pearances as lecturers or preachers, where they thus address the 
 public, to float off its influences through the public mind. Differing 
 in the length to which they push their views, these philosophic pro- 
 pagandists are united in the desire to overthrow Revelation. Old 
 Cato had for his burden, " Carthage must be destroyed, "and theirs is 
 that "Christianity must perish." Theodore Parker, Mr. Emerson, and, 
 I am sorry to say, the " Atlantic Monthly," as it seems, are the leaders 
 in this new Crusade. An American Clergyman just returned from 
 India, expressed himself lately at a public meeting as shocked to find 
 the progress of Pantheism in America during his fourteen years' ab- 
 sence. How far the contagion has affected Canada I cannot say, but I 
 feel bound to do my part in tearing off the mask of attractiveness from 
 the deadly lie, and in piercing it with the Ithuriel's Spear of Truth, 
 that it may lose its fair dissimulations, and start into all the horrors 
 of its naked outline. 
 
 Most of you have, perhaps, heard, or have otherwise learned, that 
 Mr. Emerson is a representative in America of the Transcendental 
 Philosophy which took its rise, in later times, from Immanuel Kant, 
 
m 
 
 I 
 
 and has, since, been dcvolopod. tolonijths of which he did not. drcnm, 
 by Ficlito, SohoUin;^', and lloiji'l. Thr niini4>. Transcendentalism, 
 has in it the central idea of Kant's system. In the terminolopy of 
 that philosopher, it means that which transcends or rises beyond ex- 
 perimental knowledge, and is determined, // ]>n'i>r/\ withontarjjument 
 or proof, in ret^ard to the j)rin(!iplesand sni)ie<'tsof hnman knowledge. 
 Mis fundamental doctrine is that all our knowled;^e is from within, 
 out; not from without, //</'> our minds: and that we know nothing 
 eertuitdy, except our own con.xciousness — that, is tliat we are. We 
 have /'Afj.s* respectinii; the apptarancos around us, but our knowled|^t^ 
 of them is simply a knowledi^e of the forms witli which the mind itself 
 clothes them. ()f the reality of the apparent objeet,s themselves, we 
 can know uothintr. We act according; to the necessity of our consti- 
 tution, drawinj; certain conclusions, and the.se only, from the data 
 nature affords, lint that these conclusions, that is, that the testi- 
 !nony of our senses, ajiree with external truth, cannot be proved. If 
 the laws of our mental action were changed, we would, according? to 
 Kant, see cverythin<]^ chan<;ed around us. Man is the self-complete, 
 self-dependent Tnit, amidst a universe of shadows. 
 
 This principle laid down, Kant found himself open to imputations 
 of atheism, which he repudiated. It was urged, that, if we can know 
 nothing certainly outside ourselves, there remain no means of provinj^ 
 the existence of Ciod or any of the 2;reat doctrines of man's relation to 
 Ilim. It will be remembered that revelation has no place in the 
 sources from which Kant would d;;rlvo our knowled^ie, for that, of 
 course, must be from uithonf. Shrinking from the desolation of 
 a universe in which man alone existed, amidst illusions and shadows, 
 with nothing possible to be proved except his own existence, he 
 sought to save himself by demanding that the existence of God, the 
 immortality of the soul, and the freedom of the will, bo admitted a.s 
 first truths, as the existence of man him.self had been already. They 
 were to be taken for granted as points which must be conceded as a 
 necessary basis of a system of morals. IJut they could not by any 
 possibility be proved. 
 
 The active faculties of the mind he classed under two great divi- 
 
 I 
 
 4 
 
 
 m 
 
lot drcnm, 
 (lontnlism, 
 linolopy of 
 )»»yoti(l ox- 
 
 nr<;uinont 
 
 nowlodijo. 
 >iii within, 
 w nothing; 
 
 art'. We 
 knowiod^e 
 iiind itself 
 isi'lvos, we 
 lur consti- 
 tliu data 
 
 the t€Rti- 
 roved. If 
 jordinj^ to 
 -complete, 
 
 iputationH 
 
 can know 
 
 f provin«^ 
 
 relation to 
 
 je in the 
 
 r that, of 
 
 )lation of 
 
 shadows, 
 
 tence, he 
 
 God, the 
 
 mitted a.s 
 
 \>' They 
 
 dcd aH a 
 
 t by any 
 
 •eat divi- 
 
 lions: the Understanding, which finds its fit ministry in inductive 
 study, as of the physical sciences ; — and, as a far higher agency, 
 " Pure Keason" — that i.s, in common words, Imagination, ova priori 
 speculation, which is to guide us intuitively into the knowledge of 
 *' absolute truth." Understanding watches and notes the phenomena 
 around us ; Pure Koason combines its judgments, and draws general 
 conclusions. Our " conceptions" arc derived immediately from expe- 
 rience, and nmy be traced back to some experimental reality, and 
 hence may be fitly used in the elaboration of scientific knowledge. 
 But the far higher office of the Reason is to generalize its conclusions 
 and create " ideas" which are the appointed means of regulating the 
 Understanding, which can never, by itself, conduct us to essential 
 truth. Thus the " Understanding" is left to the drudgery 
 of life, while this faculty called Keason reigns imperially over all its 
 higher interests. It is not likely that this theory will be perfectly 
 clear to you, for Fichte himself, the successor of Kant in the high 
 priesthood of German Transcendentalism, declares that he holds the 
 writings of that philosopher to bo altogether unintelligible to any 
 one who does not know beforehand what they contain. An accurate 
 definition of whnt is meant by "Pure Reason," it appears impossible 
 to obtain. M Carlyle, who cleaves to Kant with his whole soul in 
 this particular, tries his best to explain it in his Miscellanies, but all 
 even he can do is to vilify the understanding and exalt this airy attri- 
 bute in vague and general torms. " The province of the Understand- 
 ing," he says, " is of the earth, earthy ; it has to do only with real, 
 practical, and material knowledge — mathematics, physics, political 
 economy, and such like, but must not step beyond. On the other hand, 
 it is the province of Reason to discern virtue, true poetry, or that 
 God exists. Its domain lies in that higher region, whither logic and 
 argument cannot reach ; in that holier region, where poetry, virtue, 
 and divinity abide ; in whose presence Understanding wavers and 
 recoils, dazzled into utter darkness by that sea of light, at once the 
 fountain and the termination of all true knowledge." These are Mr. 
 Carlyle's words (Mis. I. 102, 103), and they state the creed of his 
 school, on the fundamental point of the basis of our belief, beyond a 
 
fi 
 
 cavil. '' Reason," whatever it be, is alone to invcsti,c:ate and decide 
 on all relij^ious <|Ucstions. Man, unaided, is to elimb the heavens and 
 pierce their secrets ; and in so doinij;, he is to discard all help IVoiu 
 " lo<MC or ar<;ument." from the testimony of his senses and the accu- 
 mulation of proof. The inductive principle which alone has wrested 
 secular knowledge from the dreams of fiincy, and m:iile progress possi- 
 ble, is to be shunned in all questions ol' morals or religion. I'roofs from 
 any source are to be discarded. V;igue thoughts, uncertain leelinga, 
 intuitions and impressions are to decide without (juestion or appeal in 
 morals and faith. Such is Kant's system in its practical bearing.s. Its 
 deadly opposition to Revelation is on its forehead. Man is hence- 
 forth, according to this doctrine, to make his own Religion by reve- 
 lations of his own reason ; he is to hold out his flaring candle into 
 the dark and deou it illumination. Mr. Emer.son follows in the 
 footsteps of this theory with a zeal which his words can express, 
 apparently, only feebly. 1 le speaks of "the wintry light of the under- 
 standing, " ''the despotism of the senses :" " its officious activity is to 
 be renounced"' and '• Iree and ample leave to be given to the sponta- 
 neous sentiment (what does this mean ?) if we would be great ;" "the 
 low views and utilitarian hardness of men arc owing to their working 
 on the world with the understanding only." We are to discard it 
 henceforth if we would know the truth. The source of our know- 
 ledge of trutii is thus metaphorically stated : "The doors of the temple 
 stand open day and night, before every man, and the oracles of the 
 truth cease never ; yet it is guarded by one condition ; this, namely ; 
 it is an intuition." That is, we learn it on the instant without 
 examination or reflection ; we have an intuitive perception of it8 
 being truth without the intervention of testimony or argument. All 
 the truths which it takes a whole Bible to tell are thus to flash from 
 the reason at a stroke, and light up the secrets of the Universe I 
 This " intuition" is very commonly spoken of by Mr. Emerson under 
 the more familiar name of "genius;" an epithet varied elsewhere by 
 the statement that "the essence of all religion" is "the sentiment of 
 virtue," but this, too, " is an intuition ;" — a looking into it directly, 
 without a medium, and as by a law of our being. Kant tells us that the 
 
d decide 
 vons and 
 lelp Iroiu 
 the accu- 
 i wrested 
 Dss possi" 
 oofs from 
 reelin}i;a, 
 appeal in 
 lnt!;s. It« 
 is hence- 
 i by reve- 
 ndlc into 
 s'S in the 
 I express, 
 he undcr- 
 ivity is to 
 le sponta- 
 at ;" "the 
 r working 
 discard it 
 ur know- 
 l;o temple 
 es of the 
 namely ; 
 without 
 on of its 
 lent. All 
 ash from 
 ni verse I 
 son under 
 where by 
 iment of 
 directly, 
 8 that the 
 
 "spontaneous intuitions of positive reason are the standard in the soul 
 by which wc are to judge the claims of any object of adoration or 
 article of belief," and I might put the words in Mr. Emerson's mouth, 
 80 exactly do they state his constantly repeated sentiment. But is it 
 true that reason is thus fit to create for man a Religion — that he can 
 make one for himself and will be under no obligation to his Maker for 
 any help in the matter ? If so, why is the doctrine so powerless on the 
 mass of mankind ? Why did we never see an example of its truth in 
 any nation ? Whence the sunken immorality of Greece with all its 
 philosophers? Is there in tlic general consciousness a corroboration 
 of this doctrine ? Does not the history of the temples, offerings, 
 prayers, priesthoods, literature, public and private life of all ages 
 give it the lie ? Everywhere, from all the generations of our race, 
 a need of help from above has been felt; and can the vain self-suffi- 
 ciency of a few metaphysicians bo set up to neutralize the sorrowing 
 confession of a world ? Are we prepared to abdicate onr honours as 
 thinking beings tlius? Is the Baconian method to remain the glory 
 of the world, and the only received basis of knowledge, in all other 
 domains of the intellect, but to be barred out if it attempt to lift a 
 footstep into the territory of morals ? Are we to return to the '' sand- 
 wastes and mirage of a specuh'tive theology,'' as Coleridge aptly calls 
 them, and instead of gathering and collating the facts which God 
 has strewn over the face of nature, and of human experience, and of 
 Revelation, instead of using these to deduce sure generalizations and 
 thus sound our way with patient toil toward the indisputable, are 
 we to be flung back into misty hypotheses, and a prion' dreams? 
 Are we to discard contemptuously, without a hearing, a Record pur- 
 porting to be a Revelation of the laws of our moral constitution, a 
 record endorsed by the gratcl'ul faith of the wise and good through 
 untold generations; are we contemptuously to reject it without 
 examination, without argument, despising its proferred evidences, 
 and scouting the condescension of any criticism of its claims, deciding 
 against it by the easy process of an intuition, vaulting over the 
 encircling hills into Paradise, as Satan of old into Eden, by the won- 
 drous spring-board of this mental magic ? 
 
9 
 
 y 
 
 
 John Dryden, in his Rcligio Laici, puts the claims of reaion in 
 
 a light as beautiful as it is striking : 
 
 "Dim as the borrowed beams of moon and etarf 
 To lonely, weary, wandering travellers, 
 Is reason to the soul ; and, as on high, 
 Those rolling fires discover but the sky. 
 Not light us here ; so reason's gliramering ray, 
 Was lent, not to assure one doubtful way, 
 But guide us upwards to a better day." 
 
 Apart from the artless confession of the heart and the lessons of 
 experience, the results of the worship of reason in Kant's own country 
 are enough to keep us from trusting to our own speculations and 
 sentimental fancies in morals and religion. The old fable of Phaeton 
 attempting to drive the chariot of the sun, has been re-acted, and 
 presumption has set the sphere of truth and spiritual law a-blaze as 
 his, erewhile, did the material heavens. We shall see before we close 
 what a dancing will-of-the-wisp reason is in Mr. Emerson's own 
 case, and how foolishly it has bemircd himself. 
 
 As he has accepted Kant's theory of Pure Reason, so our author 
 has no less fervently adopted his teachings on the fundamental laws 
 of knowledge. A *' noble doubt" he tells us, '• perpetually suggests 
 itself, ''^ -^ whether nature outwardly exists. Jt is a svffirient ac- 
 count of that appearance ice call the world, that God will teach a 
 human mind, and so makes it the receiver of a certain number of 
 congruent sensations which we call sun and moon, man and women, 
 house and trade. In my utter impotence to test the authenticity of 
 the report of my senses, to know whether the impressions they make 
 on me correspond with out-lying objects, what diflference does it make 
 whether Orion is up there in heaven, or some god paints the image 
 in the firmament of the soul ?" " Nature," with him, *' is a phenome- 
 non, not a substance" — the Universe is " the great apparition shining 
 so peacefully on us." Without troubling you with metaphysics, I 
 leave common sense to supply the corrective to these echoes of Ger- 
 mony. If you wish to sec them demolished scientifically, you may 
 turn to Reid, or Stewart, or Hamilton. 
 
 I leave you to judge the measure of reliance to be placed on the 
 
9 
 
 roMon in 
 
 lessons of 
 n country 
 itions and 
 f Phaeton 
 ctcd, and 
 a-blazo as 
 e wc close 
 ?on'8 own 
 
 lur author 
 
 sntal laws 
 
 y suggests 
 
 firient ac- 
 
 II teach a 
 
 umber of 
 
 women, 
 
 nticity of 
 
 icy make 
 
 s it make 
 
 the image 
 
 )henome- 
 
 n shining 
 
 ihysics, I 
 
 )8 of Ger- 
 
 you may 
 
 sd on the 
 
 guidance of one to whom his fellow men, and the varied scenery of 
 the earth iind heavens, arc only so many sensations and so many 
 apparitlon.s. 
 
 After Kant camo Fichte ;is tlio ncxthiorarch cfGonnun philosophy. 
 Chocked by no h\k\\ .r of Cdiiscfjiicneea as Kant, he at once dis- 
 carded the rundam{i..ai truths that philosopher had assumed as 
 necessary, while confessing their incapability of proof. Fichte re- 
 duced our only eert:iiii knowledge to that of our own existence, which 
 he admitted as a first truth requiring no jirgunient. but the right 
 to assume anything further was given up. The formula of Dcs 
 Cartes — Co(/i.fo nyn smn — "' T think, therefore T am," was virtually 
 the motto of Fichte. But the absolute solitude of man in the 
 universe, thus implied, left its countless phenomena unexplained. The 
 empty Infinite around nuii^t be filled with at least the appearance of in- 
 telligent agency, and. for this, the illusions of Pantheism offered the 
 necessary aid. Cherished for immemorial ages along the ancient 
 rivers of the east, they had travelled to the west before the days of 
 Plato, and had been, through the history of early '"philosophy, the 
 favourite doctrines of the educated few, when Polytheism held away 
 with the mass, and Revelation was confined to the hills of Judea. 
 Their dreamy vagueness and the scope it gives for poetic sensibility 
 has always made them attractive, while their airy abstraction has no 
 less unfitted them for securing the interest of nuinkind at larj^e. In 
 modern times they owe their revival in Western Europe mainly to 
 the dislike of Spinoza to llevelation, and througli him they have 
 gained their latest introduction as the basis of a philosophical reli- 
 gion. Seeing their fitness for his want, Fichte embraced them with 
 ardour, and inaugurated the era which Mr. Emerson labours to make 
 permanent. Af a middle position between the acceptance of a personal 
 God and the black vacuity of Atheism, he adopted the Pantheistic 
 doctrine of one absolute existence in all things — in the *' Me" — that 
 is in man, and in the " Not Me" — that is the universe at large ; one 
 undefined and undefinable spiritual essence pervading all things. — 
 Man and the universe were thus alike conceded a spiritual reality. 
 Our common idea of matter, Fichte, however, would not at all admit 
 
 B 
 
 1 
 
 I 
 

 
 14' ■ •* ' ■ 
 
 
 P- 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
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 1 
 
 
 V-l> 
 
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 10 
 
 A pervading soul, the same in the world around, and in man himself, 
 was the one lonely and mysterious truth. As the hitrhost manifes- 
 tation of this all-inhabitin.i!; force, man is. of course, in Fichto's 
 view, as in Kant's, above the need of aiiy revelation. Indeed, a re- 
 velation is impossible, for man is bimscjt' the purest revelation 
 of the Divine. It is an affront to our nature to speak nf it. Thus 
 another step was taken in the protrress of error. After Fiehte, came 
 SehelliniT. who pushed the Pantheistic doctrines of his ])redeees.'<ors 
 still further. Hy an "intuitive" t^lance he discovered that the mind 
 and external nature are not only mere modifications of the one Univer- 
 sal iilxistenee. hut that njan,as the hiuihest manifestation of the Divine, 
 learns, in the processes of his own thoupiht, the secret of the nature of 
 this existence — that, in short, the processes, of thought are identical 
 with those of creation, so that were we to construct the universe in 
 thour!;ht, by loirical deduction, we would do virtually the same thing 
 as Deity does in developinir himself into the forms and regions of 
 creation. Thus Man becomes, by this theory, really God. The 
 baseless hypothesis, from which such results are drawn, is a striking 
 sample of what iutnitifu) accomplishes, as the standard of the truth. 
 The " intellectual intuition" of Sehelling — which is only a fuller deve- 
 lopment of what others call simply "intuition"-was supposed to open to 
 us the whole secrets of nat\ire, and to enable us, without "reasoning" or 
 ''argument," to lay bare the whole processes of its darkest mysteries. 
 Induction was thrown to the winds, and " the science of all things ' 
 was created from the lawless dreams of hypothesis, as Wordsworth's 
 grand city in the clouds shaped itself from the shifting vapours of 
 the air. 
 
 The mantle of Philosophy next rested on the shoulders of II egel 
 whose expansions and corrections of former speculations have seemed 
 to some of his followers so admirable that they have not scrupled to 
 apply to him the words of the Apostle, " When that which is perfect 
 is come, that which is, in part, shall be done away." Determined to 
 avoid the appearance of taking anything for granted as a first truth, 
 he went back a step further than any of his most adventurous pre- 
 decessors. Not willing to yield even the solitary postulate of our 
 
>• t 
 
 an himBelf, 
 
 st nianifbs- 
 
 iti Fichtc's 
 
 ndccd, a ro- 
 
 rcvolatioii 
 
 fit. Thus 
 
 'iclito, canio 
 
 ircdcccssors 
 
 ut the mind 
 
 ;)ne Univer- 
 
 ' the Divine, 
 
 he nature of 
 
 ire identical 
 
 universe in 
 
 ' same thinj; 
 
 1 regions of 
 
 God. The 
 
 H a striking 
 
 >f the truth. 
 
 I fuller devc- 
 
 i?d to open to 
 
 masoning" or 
 
 t mysteries. 
 
 all things" ' 
 
 )rds\vorth"s 
 
 vapours of 
 
 rs of Hegel 
 ave seenjed 
 scrupled to 
 ■h is perfect 
 termined to 
 first truth, 
 iturous pre- 
 ilate of our 
 
 11 
 
 own being, ho started from the gloomy premises that neither the ex- 
 istence of I he world, nor our o\.., can be certainly known. The 
 mind itself and the objects of our peieeptions are, with Hegel, 
 alike beyond the reach of our proofs, and our whole domain of assu- 
 rance lies in the relations between the mind seeing and what is seen. 
 These alone, according to him, <;in be affirmed to be realities. To form 
 an idea, there need to bo two opposites. The conception oi' a tree needs 
 both the mind and the tree, before it can exist, and I'rom the mutual in- 
 fluence of the two, the idea of it springs ; and ideas thus derived, are the 
 only realities in the universe. As they could not exist but for their 
 relations, the relationship is the on/j/nhso/nfc nuliii/ to be found, the 
 one truth, that is — God. This process of the evolution of Ideas is the 
 process of our lieing, and likewise of all Uoing, that is — it is the Abso- 
 lute — it is God. Every huuiun thought is a thought of the One great 
 Divine mind. Being and thought are identical, and thus God is a 
 process continually going on, but never accomplished; the Divine 
 consciousness is absolutely one with the advancing consciousness of 
 mankind ; the conceptions of the human mind are, alone, in their con- 
 stant development — the Divine. Our thought, and God, are identical. 
 Here, then, we have reached the highest flight of Transcendentalism, 
 the sublimated perfection of speculation, and it gives as its pro- 
 duct a Universe with nothing real but ideas, and no God through 
 all its dreary spaces but the pulsations of human thought. Thug 
 God is annihilated, silence lifts its leaden sceptre over all things, 
 and man, a phantasm himself, is left to look out on an empty infinity 
 amidst whoso shadows there stirs no motion of intelligence. What a 
 result for so much philosophy ! One is reminded involuntarily of a 
 Scripture text : '' Professing themselves to be wise, they became 
 fools." It is hard to put such abstract speculations in simple words, 
 and I know not whether I have been able to do it altogether correctly 
 or clearly, for even Germans have their sects in interpreting these 
 systems. Do Quincy affirms, indeed, that fully a thousand books 
 have been written to clear up what Kant is supposed to have meant, 
 and his followers are no less misty than their apostle. With the de- 
 velopements of Hegelianism I shall not trouble you, but you will 
 
ll' 
 
 m 
 
 18 
 
 8CC the connection of tlic modern Continental philosophy, as a whole. 
 with my subject, in the fact that Mr. Kmerson lillsliis nrn with li;j:ht 
 at their central lire, and is rather a pale reflection of them than an 
 orit^inator ior himself We have hence, in Mr. Kmerson's writinirs. 
 aloni; with Kants idealisin. all the varyin-j: dreams of the Panthe- 
 ism of hi>< successors. \\(\ helieves in no intelliirent existence 
 except m;m. hut. hesitatin-^ to ado}tt the conclusion that the 
 I'niverse is a fortuitous concourse of nttuns. dishelieviniLi', iv.decd. that 
 it is more than the reflection of our tnvn thoufjht IVoni so many sha- 
 dows ami appearances, he adopts tiie ultra I'antheistie theory of the 
 unity and identity of all things as only varyimi' nuinifestations of the 
 Divine, nishelievinjr in a Personal (iod, he end)odies such of His 
 attributes as please Him in the spirit of nuin, and, in a lower dciiree, 
 in the phenomena of the heavens and the earth around us. But the 
 adequate utt(>ranee of a creed like this, in the <lialects of the too prac- 
 tical west, is a difficult task. .Mr. iMnerson. therefore. I'ollowini: tlie 
 example of his (rerman instructors, betakes himself to the sufliciently 
 distant and venerable Brahminism of I ndia for a becomimr statement. 
 Jesus Christ is with him a far more lightly esteemed authority than 
 Krishna, and the Bible nothing alontrside the Vedas and the Puranas 
 of Hindooism. He lets Vishnu — the member of the IHndoo triad, 
 speak for him, thus: "The whole world is but a manifestation of 
 Vishnu, who is identical with all things, and is to be regarded by 
 the wise as not differing from, but as the same as themselves. I 
 neither am poinc nor coming ; nor is my dwelling in any one place ; 
 nor art thou, thou; nor arc others, others; nor am I, I." As if, says 
 he, " He had said. All is for the soul, and the soul is Vishnu ; and 
 animals and stars arc transient paintings, and light is whitewa.sh,* * 
 and heaven itself a decoy." Elsewhere, he gives his estimate of him- 
 self, thus — " I am nothing; 1 see all; the currents of the Universal 
 Being circulate through me ; I am part and parcel of God." A per- 
 sonal God is thus utterly rejected ; the world is God, and God is the 
 world, with man as his highest manifestation. Shooting far ahead 
 of Kant's assumed first truths of the existence of God, man's free 
 will and immortality, he stops only with the annihilation of them all. 
 
 
 .irif 
 
%? 
 
 i; 
 
 :>s !i wliolo. 
 n witlj liiilit 
 cMii tliaii ail 
 IS writinirs. 
 the Piiiithc- 
 t <'xistoi\c«i 
 1 that tho 
 i'.'.li'rd. that 
 1 many sha- 
 iioory ol' the 
 it ions of the 
 <iK'h of His 
 Dwer decree. 
 IS. Hut the 
 the too prae- 
 oUowinir tlie 
 e sufliciently 
 jr statement, 
 thority than 
 the Puranas 
 indoo triad, 
 ifestation of 
 rejrarded by 
 mselves. 1 
 
 one place ; 
 As it", says 
 
 shnu ; and 
 
 tewash,-'- * 
 nate of him- 
 
 e l-niver.sal 
 A per- 
 
 d God is the 
 far ahead 
 
 man'8 free 
 
 of them all. 
 
 la 
 
 It grate.s aadly on Mr. Emerson's sensibilities that any one should 
 be willing to stand indebted to the past for his religion. It is a 
 favourite theme with the school he represents, as it has been since tlie 
 days of Spinoza, that everything in faith which is old and venerable 
 is worthies.^ — as if morals grew old, or truth decayed. Carlyle tells 
 us that the "old Jew stars" (the Bible) "are gone out." Mr. Emer- 
 son asks, " why sh<nild we gropi' among the dry bones of the past or 
 put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe?" 
 '• Let us demand our own works and laws and worship." Now, with- 
 out discussing the question how new moralities can be possible, any 
 more than new laws of numbers oroiany other eternal truths, how can 
 that which was wrong, essentially, yesterday, be right to day, or how 
 can each generation liave a new wor.ship, unless each is to find the 
 former in error lor ever ? 1 beg you to keep this doctrine of Mr. 
 Emerson's in mind, as we trace the outline of his philosophy. You 
 shall judge how much the sneer at the Bible is worth from one who 
 rcverendly accepts translaticjns of the interminable Vedas and Pur- 
 anas of llindooism, with their mysticism, their puerilities, and their 
 frequently false moralities, in itsi)lace: and the originality will no 
 less strike you, which is, throughout, only a faint lunar reflection of 
 other men's thoughts. 
 
 Mr. Emerson has adopted in full Hegel's notion of the Identity 
 of the Divinity with the Human Consciousness — that is, that 
 thought is the one absolute Truth, or God — and we know that man's 
 Thought, the ideas developed from his mental action, are all he ad- 
 mits to exist. *' Empcdocles," says he, " undoubtedly spoke a truth 
 of ihoiKjld — (respecting thought) when he said, 'I am God.' " — 
 " That which once existed in Intellect as pure Law," he tells us, 
 has now taken a body as Nature." But as he does not believe that 
 nature has a Body in our sense, but is an Apparition, this is only a 
 round-about way of intbrming us that he thinks Intellect God — and 
 as he allows of no reality but our own thoughts — the ideas springing 
 from us — it next follows that God and man are interchangeable 
 terms, and, that each means the other ; as, moreover, 3Ian is ever 
 developing, so must God be ; and thus we have for God, nothing but 
 
u 
 
 ^ w 
 
 the flow of human thought as it .streams on — we have God daily 
 growing under our eyes! 
 
 It may well startle U8 to hear a m:in in (his day of th(> world thus 
 seek toannihilate God and put man in his plaec, hut it is a ecntral 
 doctrine oF Mr. Emerson, that "that which siiews (lod out of me, 
 makes nic a wart and a wen." So that outside nian there is no 
 God. ''So much of nature," f*ays in', "as man is ignorant of, so 
 much of his own mind does he not yet iws.se.ss.' JJut nature is only a 
 phantasm shining round the one Kiality — the Absolute— the Divine, 
 which shews itself through it. So that, as nature is only our own 
 mind, and God is nature — there is no God apart from Human 
 Thought. Of what value is the talk about not wearing the cast otf 
 garments of other men's faith, when Mr. Emerson presents himself 
 thus in the precise costume of Hegel. 
 
 But to serve only one master would bo more than could be hoped, 
 when the reins are thrown on the neck of speculation. It is the 
 banc of all who turn their backs on the Presence of the Lord, which 
 shines through the system of The Truth, to find no rest tlicnceforth 
 for ever. German speculation has gradually brought a confusion into 
 all the departments of moral truth it has invaded, only to be equalled 
 by that of Hindooisni, the tangled skein of whose mythology no one 
 would essay to unravel. Mr. Emerson is no exception to this law. 
 Germany will not do without the addition of India. With a credu- 
 lity which, as Mr. Monckton Milnessaid of Harriet 3Iartineau, will 
 believe anything provided it be not in the Bible, he sits at the feet of 
 pundits when he openly despises prophets, and lauds the oracles of 
 Benares, when he scoffs at those of Mount Zion. The doctrine of 
 transmigration seems to find favour with him. As the Brahmin be- 
 lieves that he has existed in other forms on earth before the present 
 life, and, unless specially pleasing to Brahma, will have still further 
 migrations hereafter, so Mr. Emerson speaks of the "Deity sending 
 each soul into nature, to perform one more turn through the cir- 
 cle of beings" — language which a Hindoo would think very ortho- 
 dox and pious. " The soul," says he, " having been often born, or 
 as the Hindoos say, ' travelling the path of existence through thou- 
 
 .1 
 
 
15 
 
 u God daily 
 
 c world thus 
 is a central 
 (1 out of me, 
 
 1 thoro is no 
 iiorant of, so 
 uro is only a 
 -tlio Divine, 
 nly our own 
 rum Human 
 the c;ist off 
 Mjts himself 
 
 Id be hoped, 
 1. It is the 
 Lord, which 
 thenceforth 
 nfusion into 
 ) be equalled 
 •logy no one 
 to this law. 
 ith a credu- 
 tineau, will 
 t the feet of 
 
 2 oracles of 
 doctrine of 
 Brahmin be- 
 the present 
 itill further 
 lity sending 
 agh the cir- 
 
 very ortho- 
 :en born, or 
 rough thou- 
 
 ■1 
 
 lands of births,' having beheld the things which are here, those which 
 are in heaven, and those which are beneath, there is nothing of which 
 she has r ' 'gained the knowlodiro; no wonder that slio is able to re- 
 collect, in regard to anything, what she formerly knew." This is the 
 quintessence of the Brahmin (loctrinoof Transmigration: the repe- 
 tition in this late century of the world of the misty guess borrowed 
 from India, of Socrates, groping after the Truth, amidst the gross 
 darkness of his day — li'JOO years ago — his long vanished doctrine of 
 Reminiscence. So much for getting a new religion at the hands 
 of Mr. Emerson. 
 
 In the doctrine of immortality Mr. Emerson has no steadfast be- 
 lief Here and there we find a faint protest by his better nature 
 against the monstrous tenets of his creed ; but the general tenor of 
 his writings holds out nothing better to us after death, if we be not 
 sent into the world again in some other body, than absorption into 
 Nature, that is Annihilation. 
 
 There is something very sad in the following confession of darkness 
 and ignorance in which, after all, his Divine Rank as "part of God" 
 leaves him on the great question of our future fate — " I cannot tell 
 if these wonderful qualities which house to-day in this mortal frame, 
 shall ever re-as.semble in equal activity in a similar frame, or whether 
 they have before had a natural history like that of this body you see 
 before you; bnt this one thing I know, that these qualities did not 
 now begin to exist, cannot be sick with my sickness, nor buried in 
 any grave ; but that they circulate through the Universe," — that is, 
 are absorbed into the great ocean of Being. Thus, in one page he 
 doubts the sentiments of the other, and confesses himself in ignor- 
 ance on the question which, in its various relations, is alone wortb 
 asking by us hero. Compared with this, how grand is the dream of 
 Socrates when he saw a beautiful and majestic woman, clad in white 
 garments, approaching him as he lay in prison and about to die, and 
 calling to him and saying, " Socrates, three days hence you will reach 
 fertile Phthia !" But especially, compared to this, how unspeakably 
 grand, the serene composure with which Christianity teaches us to 
 anticipate the tomb, and how touching and joyous to our innermost 
 
 I 
 
u 
 
 heart of hearts, the triumph with which it invests the last passages 
 of life — a triumph oiiibocricd in the chaunt of St. Paul when the 
 radiance of the Kternal Uili^, as his voyage was elosiiip, glittered 
 from afar — and he hreakti out incnntrolliihly. " O Death, where is thy 
 Sting? Grave where is thv Vietory ? the sting of <leath is sin, and 
 the strength of sin is the law ; hut. thanks he to God, who givcth us 
 the Victory, throneh our Lord desus Christ !" 
 
 Mr. Emerson's general opiiiiitii. wht^i f'»r a limo he shakes off his 
 misgivings, seems to be that we will hereafter he absorbed into the 
 one soul of all thintrs, as the Hralitnln hopi^s to be absorbed in Hruhma. 
 It is involved in iiis devotion to lletrel that he should think so. 
 '* The individual," he tells us. '• is a-ieending out of his limits into a 
 Catholic existence." We are. it would seem, but as wavi's which rise 
 from the deep fur a moment, to sink and lose tliemsrlves in it the next. 
 " Death is but th" return of the indivi<lua1 to tlie infinite, " and man 
 is annihilated, though the Deity will eternally live. 
 
 Mr. Emerson has no such doctrine in his creed as that of the free- 
 dom of the Hunnin will, that urcat iruth of our nature, which involves 
 our accountability and di'jnifies us with the characteristics of intelli- 
 gent beings. Since, in his opinion, to use his own words — " the 
 human race is God in distribution," there can be no l^owcr from 
 without to influence us either for good or evil, and, as we act 
 according to the necessity of our constitution, and its laws are fixed, 
 and since we have no personality, but are only waves of the Universal 
 Light, we move on without power of control and without responsi- 
 bility. " Let man learn," says he, "that he is here, not to work, 
 but to be worked upon." " The Spiritualist," he tells us. "cannot 
 bring himself to believe either in divine Providence or in the 
 immortality of the soul." Thus does this ghastly Gospel extin- 
 guish hope. For immortality we are to have annihilation, for 
 moral freedom, as necessary to responsibility, we arc to have only 
 the irresponsible working of unintelligent machines; and for Provi- 
 dence we are to have Fate, which "grows over us like grass," — that 
 is, as the grass grows over the unresisting and helpless dead. Is this 
 the new Evangel ! A world without immortality, and crushed under 
 
 M 
 
 
 « 
 
IT 
 
 nflt passages 
 il when the 
 ip, K'ittercd 
 wlicrc is thy 
 \i in sin, and 
 lo giveth us 
 
 ;ik<'s off his 
 'd into the 
 in liruhma. 
 1 think so. 
 niits into a 
 s which rise 
 it the next. 
 , ' and man 
 
 of* the free- 
 
 ch involves 
 
 s of'intelli- 
 
 )rds— " the 
 
 owor from 
 
 as we act 
 
 are fixed, 
 
 Universal 
 
 t responsi- 
 
 t to work, 
 
 "cannot 
 
 or in the 
 
 lel extin- 
 
 ;ition, for 
 
 lave only 
 
 or Provi- 
 
 — that 
 
 Is this 
 
 ed under 
 
 s. 
 
 17 
 
 i 
 
 the wheels of inexorable destiny I It reminds us of the agonies of 
 ftlio old Roman epitaphs, when hrok' n lienrts and crushed hopes 
 cried out into the darkness of the old Piv^nn sky, in sad hi^lplcKS be- 
 Wailings at cruel death and relentless doom. Mr. Emerson must 
 excuse us for pror«rrin;j; the revelation of a God who is also u Father, 
 and a hope which bathos the future in glory. 
 
 With free will, Mr. Emerson, ncces.sarily, and no less pointedly, 
 discards everything like the doctrine of the dilTerent (jualities of 
 actions. To do right, or to do wrong, niakea no difference in the 
 result. Indeed, there is no puch thing as wrong in his opinion. 
 "Ethics," he tells us, "degrade nature," as docs also "religion." 
 " The less wc Imve to do with our sins," s:ivs he. '* the better." * 
 '•Evil is good in the makinc;. '^ * The Divine effort is never re- 
 laxed; the carrion in the sun will convert itself tograssand flowers ; 
 and man, though in brothels, or gaols, or on gibbets, is on his way 
 to all that is good and true." We are told that " Nature " — that is, 
 God, the Divine Existence, — for Nature, in so far as it strikes the 
 eye, is only an Apparition to Mr. Rnierson — "is /in S<nvt. *'^= She 
 comes eating and drinking and sinning. Her darlings, the great, 
 the strong, the beautiful, are not children of our law, do not come out 
 of the Sunday School, nor weigh their food, nor punctually keep the 
 commandments." "Thecntertainmentofthe proposition of depravity." 
 he tells us, " is the last profligacy and profanation." Now, when wc 
 strip all this of its high sounding verbi'ige, to what does it amount ? 
 "Ethics," that is, a system of moral principles, "degrade nature." 
 Henceforth, therefore, no virtue should be taught, no duty insisted 
 on, no reasons for either should be assigned. Man is self luminous, 
 like the fixed stais, and gives but receives no light. Our duties, to 
 man or our neighbour, are to be left hereafter to the influence of our 
 individual "moral sentiment." Cannib.ilsand philosophers, alike, are 
 to look within for their articles of belief, and codes of morals. The 
 prospects of a millenium must be bright indeed if mankind adopt 
 such a doctrine. That "evil is good in the making," I wholly deny. 
 Thomson was right in speaking of God as "from scemivf/ evil still 
 educing good, and better still, in infinite progression." But to say 
 that evil and good should be different names for the seme thing — 
 
18 
 
 thftt wronp cftn turn riKht hy prowtli — is Minply t'> uftrr an outrnpe 
 on all our moral sensibilities. Is it a truth that " man, thouj;h in 
 brothels, or prnols, or on j:ih})ets, \h on his way to all that is piod and 
 true?" Then morality i^< of no «c«'onnt, lieellti(>n^n^'^s is asjrood an 
 virtue ; theft, and all other erimes that till piols, as pK)d as theiroppo- 
 sites, and it is as well lor a man to elose u life of infamy l»y a crime 
 which sends him to die by the lialtiT, as to fall hefore the L'nat lleaper 
 likt a shock of corn fully ripe, after a career adorne<| by every public 
 and private excellence ! IJut howi'vcr this may shock the instinctive 
 Bcntimcnts of the nuissof hunjanity, Mr. Emerson not only preaches 
 it in his own words but entbrccs it by a quotation from his favourite 
 Indian divinity, Vishnu, — " I am the same to all mankind. '1 here 
 is not one who is worthy of my love or hatred. They who serve mo 
 with adoration, I am in tlunn and they in me. If one whose ways 
 arc altogether evil, serve me alone, ho is as re-ipoctublo as the just 
 man ; he is altojrethcr well employed ; he soon becometh of a virtu- 
 ous spirit, and obtaineth eternal happiness." Simple minded people 
 may find it hard to conceive how tlie service of any Divine licin;; 
 can be compatible with '"ways which arc wholly evil." In all ages 
 and countries it has been thought that virtue was pkat^ing to the 
 gods, and vice the reverse, but what kind of service can possibly re- 
 main where there is no virtue, but where a man's ways are thus irho/ft/ 
 till? The affections can have no part in it, for they are .sold to 
 wickedness; the mere outward form remains. Kltht r, then, crime is 
 as much the service of Mr. Emerson's God as virtue, or he dignifies 
 mere genuflexions and postures by that name. If the former, he 
 outrages the universal sentiment of humanity : if the latter, he dig- 
 nifies the stuffed skin of worship with living honours, and his lofty 
 speech is an eulogy on mummery. Such a confusion of right and 
 wrong, such a premium on crime and discouragement of virtue, if 
 Mr. Emerson were followed would dissolve society. Where would 
 we be if the restraints of the world-wide doctrine that virtue is itself 
 blessed and leads to blessedness, and that vice is accursed and leads 
 to ruin, were abolished? That they are, is the doctrine of 
 Mr. Emerson ; that they are the opposite poles of moral being, 
 is the teaching of Christianity. He has made his choice, I 
 
 \. 
 
r nn outrage 
 I, tliou^'h in 
 t is j^dodund 
 is iisgood as* 
 H tlieiroppo- 
 } hy a crime 
 <rfat Kt'.ipcr 
 every [uihlie 
 p instinctive 
 nly ftroaclies 
 [lis favourite 
 nd. '1 here 
 ho servo uio 
 whose ways 
 ! an the just 
 
 oi'a virtu- 
 JuK'd people 
 vine Hein;: 
 
 In all a^es 
 ^ini^ to tiie 
 lossibly re- 
 lius u'hnllt/ 
 are sold to 
 en, crime is 
 le dij.Miifies 
 
 i'urmer, lie 
 (T, ho di^'- 
 I his lofty 
 
 riuht and 
 {' virtue, if 
 icro would 
 ue is itself 
 and leads 
 ctrine of 
 ral being, 
 choice, I 
 
 19 
 
 kave made mine and am willing to abide by it, hero and hereafter. 
 
 As might bo expected in one who preaches the divinity of man, 
 And that there is no freedom of the hi'itan will, and nn immortality, 
 Mr. Emerson is especially olfoiiil'd by tlie so called fanaticism of 
 those who rise to enthusiasm in the contemplation of the truths of 
 Christianity. Like and unlike arc, however, often linked by subtle 
 tics. He lays down rules lor tlie elevation of the religious affections 
 which, I fe.jr, are far less sober tli.iii the frames he .'jomuch dislikes. 
 His God is himself, seen in tho multiform shapes of nature, from 
 which, by the way, it is only one step to get to the fetish and tho 
 idol. Of eours(^ worship is required, but what it is it would be hard 
 to gather from Mr. Kmerson's books. We arc to let our hearts throb, 
 with the throbbing luiart of nature — wc arc to commune with the 
 spirit of the stars, and woods, and fields, but what that means wc are 
 not precisely informed. One passage alone seems clear enough to 
 quote. " To lead a heavenly life, one is to listen with insatiable 
 ears to the voieo which speaks to us from behind, till he rises to an 
 * ccstatical state,' and becomes careless (»f his food and of his house, 
 and is the fool of ideas." Or he is " to go and be dumb, and si' 
 with his hands on his iiinuth, a long austere Pythagorean lustrum." 
 Christianity tells us to do (Muist's will if wo would know his doc- 
 trine, but Mr Emerson substitutcvs the dreaming of the mystic for 
 this healthful njedicine of action. To get so ecstatic, it is not said 
 with what, as to become careless of our food, and of our house, that 
 is, of our duties, and to be the fool of ideas, and to sit dumb, with 
 our hands on our mouths, is .surely little better than a rendering into 
 English of the rule of tho Bhagavad Gita — the favourite book of the 
 Hindoos, which Mr. Emerson loftily eulogises — that the devotee 
 who " can sit for days looking at the point of his nose and thinking 
 of nothing," has arrived at the pinnacle of religious perfection. 
 
 When there is nothing definite in a creed, but only vague gene- 
 ralities, impalpable metaphysics, and oracular bursts, emerging from 
 darkness and sinking into it again before the close of a paragraph, 
 it is like trying to catch the flicker on the wall, to follow and grasp 
 its parts. Ossian fighting in a cloud with ghosts, had not a task 
 more hopeless. That there is no system in Pantheism, that there 
 
! I 
 
 20 
 
 is no relation of parts, uo conslstLMicy, thatitis not founded on faots, 
 that it is not sclenco bas-.d on induction from I'acts, and that it cannot 
 bs proved to be a revelation, is a sufficient refutation of its claims. 
 Its tendencies, personal and relative, add their weight to its con- 
 demnation. 
 
 It might be expected that Mr. Emerson wholly rejects anything 
 like the positive morals of the Bible. He declaiin.s not only against 
 Christianity and the Bible, but Churclies and Sabbatii-schools, and 
 benevolent associations are only ibod for a jneer. Prayer, is to him, 
 supremely ridiculous. " Tiie dull pray," says lie " Ueniu.ses,"' that 
 is, those especially tilled with the Divine J^pirit, '" are light mockers." 
 Anything like an inculcation of the virtues which the Bible imposes 
 as the standard of Christian manhood, is not to be found in his 
 writings. Like the Brahmin who holds that tlie devotee who neg- 
 lects all temples, creeds, holy ])laees, oblations and oflerings to the 
 Gods, and just lifts a thought (u iiraliuia, or meditates on Om, is holier 
 than the laborious pilgrim who toils from afar to pay the duties of 
 his faith, Mr. Emerson tolls us that he leads a heavenly life who 
 falls into reveries in the contemplation of the landscape, while no 
 such estimate is accorded where poetic sensibility is deficient, though 
 every day may bo adorned by unostentatious acts of practical 
 godliness. 
 
 From the theory that all things are one and the same, mere 
 phenomena of the one thinking principle, i\Ir. Emerson deduces re- 
 sults in natural science which are startling enough, and merit quo- 
 tation as a means ofjudging how far one who is so grievously wrong 
 in minor details is trustworthy in the higher regions v\' truth. We 
 are gravely informed that the reason why natural philo.sophers 
 know about the substances on which they bestow their study is that 
 tiioy are identical v:itli. ihrm. '• Animated chlorine knows of 
 chlorine, and animated zinc knows of zinc. 1'heir (juality makes 
 his career, and he can variously publish their virtues, hccause they 
 mmpose him." A man who can put in print such jargon as this 
 must, surely, illustrate Addi.son's theory that only a thin membrane 
 in the brain, .sometimes well nigh invisible, decides whether one bo a 
 fool or a philosopher. 
 
«l 
 
 ded on faots, 
 
 lat it cannot 
 
 f its claims. 
 
 to its con- 
 
 ts unything 
 ^nlj against 
 schools, and 
 !r, is to him, 
 iuses," that 
 it mockers." 
 bie imposes 
 and in his 
 e who neg- 
 ings to the 
 Im, is holier 
 le duties of 
 ily life who 
 , while no 
 t?nt, though 
 1' practical 
 
 a me, mere 
 leduces re- 
 iierit quo- 
 isly wrong 
 
 uth. Wc 
 lilosophers 
 idy is that 
 
 knows of 
 lity makes 
 r<iuse tliet/ 
 
 on as this 
 membrane 
 r one be a 
 
 Mr Emerson adds to his doctrine of the development of all things 
 ftom the universal soul, as phantasmal manifestations of itself, the 
 more material doctrine of the "Vestiges of Creation," that a transmuta- 
 tion of species is gradually raising the lowest form to the highest. 
 Lamarck and Do Maillet have found a new disciple in Mr. Emerson. 
 But we all know the baselessness of this theory. Exploded as it is, 
 Mr. Emerson brings it forward as corroborative of his system. — 
 Whether his unfairness or knowledge be to blame, I leave to each 
 to determine. The Nebular Hypothesis is, in the same manner, pressed 
 by him into his services. "All things," he tells us, "are perfecting. 
 The nebula tends to be a ring, a comet, a globe, and parent of new 
 stars." But Lord Kosse's telescope dissipated this theory long ago, 
 so that, as it is one of the grand facts by which Mr. Emerson supports 
 his scheme of nature, the value of the whole may be fairly judged 
 from the unsoundness of this part of the foundation. 
 
 It is a characteristic of the class to which Mr. Emerson belongs, 
 to resort to tricks of languajje and to bold assertion, without regard to 
 correctness, to bolster their cause. To smooth their way, the vene- 
 rable phraseology of revelation is still retained, while it is made to 
 speak an entirely opposite sense to that which it usually bears. The 
 unwary reader is thrown off his guard by finding the words of Sc-'ip- 
 ture often preserved, and it is only when he remembers the context 
 that he starts at the snare. With a similar aim, no statement is too 
 reckless, no lightly thrown off insinuation too baseless, to be withheld, 
 if the one darling object can be furthered, of lowering the prestige 
 and authority of Christianity. One example from many will suffice. 
 
 In his lecture on Plato, he ventures the statement, that the Phaedo 
 supersedes the necessity of Christianity, since " Calvinism is in it, 
 Christianity is in it." His sketch of Plato and his works is based, 
 as appears from Mr. Emerson's chance admission, on the Translation 
 published in J3ohn's Library, a source which saves much labour, but 
 is not fitted to enhance his claim to discourse on the " American 
 Scholar," which forms the theme of one of his preljctions. Follow- 
 ing his example, any one may, at once, sec how utterly unfounded is 
 the assertion. Christianity is not in the Phaedo, but, at best, there 
 is a dim glimpse of the great truth of our immortality seen painfully 
 
22 
 
 and faintly, as when one strains to,distini::uish an object in the brown 
 tAviiight. But assertion is potent, and, made thus recklessly and 
 authoritatively, might pass unchallengod by most. Is it consistent 
 with the philosophic character to try to underrate a religion he dis- 
 likes, by alFecting to believe that its revelations were anticipated, 
 when to read the authority he quotes, is to sec the disproof of the 
 insinuation ? 
 
 One of the most uniform characteristics of minds of a high class, 
 is their depth of reverential feeling and a certain solemnity of thought 
 in the presence of great Truths. There is a subdued sadness run- 
 ning like slow distant music through real genius. Shakspere tells us 
 
 that 
 
 " All our joys most pure and I10I7, 
 
 Sport iu the sli:ido\v oau;jlit t'roiu MoliinrliDly :" 
 
 Mr. Carlyle, though a Pantheist, like iMr. Emerson, has that great- 
 heartedness and the true poet's eye that sees into the depths of things, 
 but ills American copyist does not move a muscle, where Iw 
 fetches a sigh. In the Pantheistic confession of faith, published by 
 John Sterling, as that of Mr. Carlyle, and accepted by him, there is 
 a deep and earnest .sadness, such as a loving soul could not fail to 
 shew, in looking at a world where " Evil, Grief, Horror. >hame. 
 Follies, Errors, and Frailties, of all kinds, press on the eye and heart," 
 especially when no faith in Providence, or Redemption, or Im- 
 mDi-tality, r^lievc^ the shade. But Mr. Emerson dwells so wholly 
 on the superficial as never to pierce to the real sad grandeur beneath. 
 " As shallow streams run dimpling all the way," he wears an unbroken 
 simper, sees nothing but the holiday dress of the world, and has a 
 Heaven no higher than that of the Greeks, who thought that Olym- 
 pus almost touched it. Even the idea of God, so glorious and awful 
 to any reverential mind, is not lofty enough with him to keep him 
 from gross familiarity. He speaks of '• God's grand politeness" — as 
 if his God were altogether on a level with himself Contrast this 
 with Jonathan Edwards, with his almost angelic intellect, risin<'. in 
 spite of his unimaginative cast, into the sweetest poetry, when he 
 tells us, in his Book on the Affections, how he used to be so filled 
 with the sense of the Divine Majesty and Glory, that he would sit and 
 
 ■MM 
 
 HP 
 
23 
 
 in the brown 
 cklossly and 
 It consistent 
 iirion lie dis- 
 anticipntcd, 
 proof of the 
 
 Ji hii^h class, 
 
 y of thought 
 
 kidncss run- 
 
 pere tells us 
 
 that great- 
 is of things, 
 , where he 
 ublished by 
 lini, there is 
 
 not fail to 
 or. >hame, 
 and heart," 
 on, or Iin- 
 s so wholly 
 iir beneath. 
 1 unbroken 
 
 and has a 
 that Olym- 
 
 and awful 
 
 keep him 
 oness" — as 
 itrast this 
 
 rising, in 
 , when he 
 e so filled 
 uldsitand 
 
 . jjing them in a low voice to himself in the fields. Or take Milton's 
 Hymn put into the mouth of our great parent, Adam — which Burke's 
 |on died in repeating — or take any of all the utterances of lofty souls 
 when gazing on the Majesty of the Almighty, and the contrast is 
 complete. Mr. Emerson's creed quenches his imagination, and 
 poisons his heart. With noiliiug nobler than man and nothing 
 grander than our checkered and momentary life, he is chained to 
 ■ the earth, and has only a ghastly smile where Faith glows like a 
 seraph. The same bad taste and inability to conceive any grand 
 Ideal, marks his writings throughout. Jesus is a ' /t<?jvy,' in his 
 vocabulary, and " wc cloy of Him as of all such; if we get too much 
 of Him, llr hi'romi'i-^ <i hnrr (it ('t^fy Even the goodness and purity, 
 the infinite love and gentleness, which won the eulogy of Rousseau, 
 wake no momentary enthusiasm in slow speaking, stony Mr. Emer- 
 son. Listen to the respectful mention he makes of what is most sacred 
 to most of English speaking men. " The Universe," he tells us, 
 *' has three ciiildren, which rc-appear under different names in every 
 system of human thought, whether they be called Cause, Operation 
 and Effect ; or more poetically, Jove, Neptune, Pluto ; or, theologi- 
 cally, the Father, the Spirit and the Son." Another sprig of deadly 
 night-ohade from his rhetorical bouquets is as follows — " 3Ieantime 
 there are not wanting gleams of a better light, — occasional exan)plcs 
 of the action of man upon nature with his entire force, with reason as 
 well as understanding. Such examples are the traditions of miracles in 
 the earliest anti<|uity of all nations, the history of Jesus Christ; the 
 achievements of a principle, as in political and religious revolutions, 
 and in the abolition of the Slave Trade ; the miracles of Swcden- 
 borg, Hohenlohe, and the Shakers ; many obscure and yet contested 
 facts, now arranged under the name of Animal Magnetism; prayer, 
 elocjuence, self-healing, and the wisdom of Children ?" How admirable 
 the candour, how delicate the propriety, how modest, how humble, 
 to class together Jesus Christ, Prince Hohenlohe, Anne Lee, and 
 the Spirit Rappers ! The perversion of intellect, not to speak of 
 heart, which could venture on such a farrago, is only equalled by the 
 Unmeaning rant it is meant to sustain. 
 
 Having heard from the pen of its own Apostle these stjitements of 
 
 « 
 
its doctrines, what shall we say of Pantheism sh a scheme of religious 
 philosophy? Can we accept it as true, when tried at the bar of 
 philosophy itself? Most assuredly we cannot. The same processes 
 of thought by which Mr. Emerson reaches the belief that He him- 
 self exists, carry us on to what he rejects, the idea of a p;reat First 
 Cause. Pantheism is the first step in an argument, with the rest 
 a-wanting, and stands useless as a broken arch. Does it satisfy the 
 demands of the imagination in things of religion--those demands which 
 are pictures reflected from the heart on the brain ? Assuredly not. 
 " It is a stream without a spring, a tree without a root, a shadow 
 projected by no substance, a sound without a voice, a drama without 
 an author, a pervading thought without a thinking mind, a (Tnivcrse 
 without a God." Do its doctrines meet any better fate when tried 
 by the standard to which they appeal, " the moral . 'sentiment " of the 
 race? The testimony in each of us to tlio prevalence of law, the 
 obligation of right, the consequences of wrong, the perpetual govern- 
 ment of an invisible God, the need of redemption, and the inexpres- 
 sible grandeur and fitness oi' the nvro/ed future, frown down the 
 monstrous untruthfulness of the theology and morals Mr. Emerson 
 seeks to advance. 
 
 As Mr. Emerson's views have been given in his own language, if 
 they have failed to be undorstood, the fault must be with himself 
 Such as they are, they arc strewn over his writings, where they lie 
 imbedded in a fair breadth of reading, though unecjual and frag- 
 mentary, — a fertility of expression, often energetic and striking — 
 pleasing turns of fancy, and a cold but frequent admiration of the 
 beautiful in nature, and, at the same time, with platitudes often offered 
 for wisdom — the cuttlefish policy of ejecting darkness where there 
 is difficulty — huge self complacency everywhere radiant — swelling 
 sentences that need only to be pricked to collapse — and a great dis- 
 play of what is sought to be passed off as philosophy but is simply so 
 much fustian. Continually speaking of what he calls mysteries, it is 
 not to be supposed that he can himself very clearly comprehend or 
 set them in words. His pages always remind me of a blotted water- 
 colour sketch — a bit of the landscape here, and a fraction of a 
 figure elsewhere, but only a parti-coloured blur for the rest. 
 
 .;Vi 
 
 ""■"■lii 
 
e of religious 
 at the bar of 
 inie processes 
 lat He hitn- 
 i p:reat First 
 vith the rest 
 t satisfy the 
 namls which 
 ^nredly not. 
 )t, a shadow 
 una without 
 , a Universe 
 when tried 
 lont " of the 
 
 of law, the 
 ual f^'overn- 
 c inexpres- 
 
 down the 
 , Emerson 
 
 ni,'uage, if 
 ;h himself, 
 re they lie 
 
 and f rag- 
 striking — 
 ion of the 
 en offered 
 lore there 
 —swelling 
 
 rcat dis- 
 simply so 
 
 ries, it is 
 ohend or 
 id water- 
 on of a 
 
 25 
 
 Ts it desirable or not that this philosophy be accepted as better 
 than (Miristiiinity, or should wo still cleave to the old? At the risk 
 of ropctitlon, lot us recapitulate briefly the cliaracteristics of both. 
 If, tlicn. W(! turn to tho scope of their teaching, they differ at once. 
 31 r. KnitTSDM and his .'■chool do not preach to tho mass, but ratlior 
 affoct to (lospiso their rudeness and their blunt ignorance which ro- 
 ([uiros proof as a condition of belief. Culture, with him, is to bring 
 about tho reign of the good and true. It is to (|uicken the sensibili- 
 ties, and lit I'or that intuitive insight which perceives the highest 
 truths by a glance, and by those who do not pos.soss it, he does not 
 hope to be understood. (Christianity addresses itself to man as 
 a whole, and claims liis acceptance by the strength of its proofs. 
 Vhllosophy never raised either a nation or a tribe: Christianity 
 has clothed the naked savage, given his language form and system, 
 exchanged his war-dub for a spade, set his child to school, and led 
 himself from ferocity and degradation to a life of gentleness, honour 
 and love. Mr. I'^merson's God is a vast dreamy abstraction, un- 
 known — incaj)able of definition — a mere apotheosis of collective man, 
 for he tells us that '"Man is (lod in distribution" — with no bond of 
 sympathy with His creatures so as to direct their will, or form tlicir 
 character, or attract their love, ('hristianity discloses a Father in 
 tlu> Heavens, the Great Archetype of all Fatherhood — with open 
 hand, and benignant eye, and loving voice, and a care which is over 
 all our ways. Mr. Emerson never thinks of directing us to his con- 
 ception of (loil, for comfort, or hope, or confidence in trial : Chris- 
 tianity tells us that Jehovah is the shadow of a great rock in a weary 
 land, the Father of mercies and tho God of all consolation. And, in- 
 deed, in the craving of the soul in all countries after a Personal God 
 — a craving so intense that even in India, the native home of ]^ln- 
 theism, Kajah Uammohun Hoy declared that Polytheism, whidi gives 
 every man a Per.«omd God of his own, was a deep and sincere belief — 
 and in tho perfect countcu-part to every want of the .spirit presented in 
 tho llovelation of Jehovah, lie a sufficient refutation of I*antheism, 
 and vindication of the Scriptures. Voltaire's saying is right — ''AV 
 fh'iu ii\ ri^f,,if j„ts, i7/>nii/rin'f /' in rr,if, .'/■." Pantheism tells us that 
 in sounding tho depths of one man's thoughts, we sound the depths 
 
2« 
 
 of the Universe — that if we know ourselvo.s. wo know all the secrets 
 of Beinjj;, but our instinctive sense rec(iils from the assertion, t'hris 
 tianity, on the other hand, chords witli our innate ennvietion in ask 
 inir. instead, wht) can, by searchinir, tind out (lod . who can find out 
 the Almighty to perfection ? Mr. Knicrsou s tlu'ory is oppo.sed 
 throughout to the luoral seutinuMit of the race. The one ceaseless 
 hum of his theology is. that man is all to hiinsflf. Law. Lord, 
 Saviour, God, the Universe, and thus at a swi'cp h»' destroys all the 
 relations we would bear to a Personal (iiui. lie preaches Fate — Chris- 
 tianitv whispers Providence. lie abolishes all moral government, 
 confounds the qualities of actions, obliterates tlu* phra.seol(»gy of right 
 and wrong, obedience and sin, from the vocabulary — dismisses all re 
 sponsibility from human acts, since they are inevitable I'rom the laws 
 of our constitution, and since man, having no .separtiti- personality, can 
 be under no sanctions of individual obligatitin. Tlu! best ami the worst 
 in his eyes are one and the saim;. The deceived and the deceiver are 
 alike divine. We recoil from such a shocking thought. Christianit) . 
 on the other hand, speaks the convictitui of the heart, in its high 
 morality, its deiuund for holines.s as the cotnlition of seeing ( Jod. .\nd 
 it has the respon.se of our bo.soms in warning the sinner from the evil 
 of his ways, and in hanging up a deathless er(»wn bei'ore him who 
 seeks after right^^ousne.ss. Pantheism scotl'sat the idea of mediation. 
 Humanity, by the lire on ten thousand altars, craves it, and Cliri.s- 
 tianity offers it. Pantheism otters no code, no rules for our guid- 
 ance towards (r(jd and our neighbour, condemns the practical, honours 
 rhap.sodies, vagaries, and impulses; (;r if it preaches work, in.spircs it 
 with no living principle to direct it. Christianity is sober and prac- 
 tical, and turns to whatever can alleviate our sorrows, or elevate and 
 t)lessus, while her precepts embrace the whole circle of human rela- 
 tion.ship. Mr, Kmerson has no future to which to invite us. or, by the 
 jirospect of which, to cheer us. Ab.sorption, as when a rain drop falls 
 on the ocean — is the fate of all alike. (.Christianity speaks to the 
 innermost soul of the race in opening the gates of immortality and 
 letting the light from beyond stream down on our footsteps. There 
 is no better test of a system than its fitness to our need when a spiri- 
 tual power alone can sustain us. In life we may dream our 
 
 t ■ 
 
 MMM 
 

 tlio soorets 
 ion. Chris- 
 'tion in ask 
 can find out 
 is opposed 
 >no oea.si'le.s.s 
 haw. liord, 
 roys all the 
 ato — CliriH- 
 iovt'i'iirnoiit, 
 oj.'^y ol'ri^lil 
 iisst>s all re 
 oiu till' laws 
 iiiiality, can 
 id the worst 
 leeoiver are 
 hristianit). 
 M its hii^ii 
 (if*d. And 
 i»ni tile evil 
 hint who 
 iiu'diation. 
 md (Miris- 
 our uiiid- 
 1, honours 
 ins])ires it 
 and prae- 
 ovate and 
 man rola- 
 or. by the 
 li'op falls 
 vs to the 
 tality and 
 'IMiere 
 n a spiri- 
 |i"eam our 
 
 , I 
 
 m 
 
 theories, but death is the experiment that proves their worth. If 
 any one wish to see Mr. Emerson's philosophy in the hour of trial, 
 let him read the last letter of John Sterlin^j to Mr. Carlyle, who had 
 led liim from his early faith to the dreams of J^antheism. " Cer- 
 tainty," he tells UH, *' ho has none, and has nothin*^ for it but to keep 
 shut the lid of those secrets, with all the iron weiuhts in his power. " 
 But as Mr. Carlyle's Pantheism is much milder than Mr. Emerson's, 
 even this dreary letter would not bo dark enou<>h for one of his disciples 
 in the hour ol' death. Contrast with this agonizini!; uncertainty, 
 with the poor human bravery that tries to keep down the lid of the 
 future, the triumph of having death swallowed up in victory, and 
 all tears wiped off from all faces. ('Onipare its darkness and un 
 speakable sadness with the Christian vision of the future to Bunyan, 
 tinctured by no philosophy, with liis bad spellinir, his life in jail, and 
 his homespun trust in the word of (lod. Uemember the le<>ond he 
 saw ^littcrint^' over the gate of the ('elestial ( 'ity. '• lilcssed are they 
 that do his commandments, that they may have riuht to the Tree of 
 Life, and may enter in through the gates into the City." Listen 
 to his sight of its glories — '* Now just as the gates were opened to 
 let in the men, I looked in after them, and, behold, the City i^hone 
 like the 8un, the streets also were paved with gold ; and in them 
 walked many men, with crowns on their heads, palms in their hand.s 
 and golden harps to sing praises withal." To shoot out into Inti- 
 nUe darkness, and keep as brave a heart as may be, as its unknown 
 possibilities approach, is all that ^[r. Emerson's creed gives to soften 
 a dying pillow. Christianity sheds on that of a dying saint the 
 splendours of an inheritance incorruptible, undcfiled, and that fadeth 
 not away, tills his soul with the fall of immortal music, and 
 makes dissolution only a death-like sleep, a gentle wafting to im- 
 mortal life. Which of the two speaks most truly to our wants 
 and our longings ? Let us pay our regards to that which adds 
 another world to this, and weaves roses and amaranths for our brows 
 when we reach it. 
 
 It is a striking enforcement of humility to tind modern philosophy 
 fail so utterly in its efforts to make a Religion for itself It would 
 be well for 3Ir. Emerson, could he remember and receive theconclu- 
 
 <*, 
 
I 
 
 I (• 
 
 28 
 
 s»inn of one whom lie profossos to ro<»poft nhovo mnst. mid who 
 .soarchotl into Tnitli with :im tMnu'stncss rrt»ni whit-h our nio<l('ni 
 Kaith-iunlviTs iniLiht, takr ;i li'sson — I iiumh StH'rato>\ who siiins uj) 
 in his Apology the o.\pi.'rii'nO(' ol'his lifo. in tho (K'daration that Apollo 
 hail tauirht him this ono thinu'. that human wisilom was worth liltu- 
 or nothiu:^. IJi'ttor than tlic drivim of <i;^»nius. or the intuitions of 
 pure ro IS )n, bettor thia tlui wi^rhl without a (rod, without a conscionro, 
 without iniiaortality, is the trust ot' tho wriest hilj" or sufkliu'^-, in 
 whom (rod his perfoetod prii-'; iioM-r thaa tlic lolVu'st (hnlication 
 of man, i^randcr thin tliat h'> should 1)0 di:i;niiiiMl with tin; most 
 souuflin;:; titles, is the prayer of the public in, " (lod be merciful to n»c 
 a sinner.'' I sot up au'ainst all philosophers of Mr. Kmerson's sr'ionl, 
 tho plotur.; of (yowpn-'s Ou.tau;\:r, ami loavo you to say whether she 
 or they bo the briL'hter mirror oftho IIii:;hcst Trnlli : — 
 
 " Von ('otta;^or. who woavo.-: at her own door. 
 Pill'-iVH anil t)o1i1)ins all Ih.t little store, 
 Conlciil though ukmh, iluiI cheerful, it' not yny 
 Shuliliiijjf litT tlireiuls abn\, the livelong day, 
 Just oiirns a scanty pltlanco, and, at ni^dir. 
 Lies down sernre, lior hcnrt anl ;. )ckot li;^ht; 
 SiiP, lor her hnnilde sphere l)y nature lit, 
 Has little understanding', and no \Tit, 
 Kcceives no praise, hut (thouj,di her lot la- .-ludi, 
 Toilsome and indi;!;i;nt) .she renders iiiMi-li : 
 Just kiio\v.<, iirid knows no more, her i'lMi' (rui', 
 .V truth the l)rilliant Kreuohiuau n-'ver kiM'-c 
 .Vnd in that eharter reads wilu sparkliu;; t'ye.s, 
 lIiT title to a treasure in the skies. 
 
 Oh happy peasant ! (>!i uiih i|i;iy h ird: 
 His the mere tinsid, hers the ri'di rew ir ! ; 
 lie, praised, perhufts, for a;:;es yet to come, 
 Siie, never hearil of !ialf .i mile liouj 'loun' • 
 He, lost in errors his Viiiu 'le o I i>r. tei -), 
 She, :^Afi} in the .simplicity ot hei.-'." 
 
 Knulkiirr'a Ciljr HU'aml'rcts, OG Yuiigu SlrCLl, Turuulu. 
 
St. nnd who 
 • •ur nindcni 
 wlio Slims up 
 >n tlii'.t Ajvillo 
 i ;vorth liitK. 
 iiitiutioiis ol' 
 aoonscioiic'o, 
 sut^kliiiu', 111 
 I iIi'ilicatioM 
 
 til tllO lllDSt 
 
 crciriil to iiio 
 '.•^on'.s sv 'lool, 
 whether she 
 
 'K 
 %