SERMONS 

The Life & Legacy of
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Opening Words
Ralph Waldo Emerson

A person will worship something—have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts—but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping, we are becoming.

Meditation
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Within us is the soul of the whole, the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal One.

When it breaks through our intellect,
it is genius;
when it breathes through our will,
it is virtue;
when it flows through our affections,
it is love.

What a subject we have today. I was relieved, when I phoned Professor Paul Conkin for help, that he acknowledged the enormity of the task. Paul has studied and written about Emerson in his scholarly career. I need to thank him for helping me get something of a hold on the subject of Emerson. You should not, though, hold Paul accountable for any foolish words I might speak. I deserve the credit for all of those.

Before we get very far, it is important to say a little about Emerson’s life. Ralph Waldo Emerson was born on May 25, 1803. He was born the second of five boys. His father, minister of First Church in Boston, died when Ralph was seven. This left the family that had been poor, struggling yet more. With his brothers, Ralph was well educated from very early. In fact, there was some concern among his mentors that he was not reading better at three. His aunt was a significant influence, providing her guidance and encouraging Ralph’s continuing study. At fourteen, he joined other boys his age beginning his career at Harvard.

Around this time he started using his middle name, Waldo. He finished school unremarkably. He was in the middle of his class. Many have noted the slow flowering of his peculiar genius. His writing during this time also reflects a conformity of thought that is surprising. When he finished college he taught for a few years, contributing, as his older brother had, to the support of his family.

Then, at twenty, Emerson decided to follow his father and the urging of his beloved aunt into the ministry. During his studies he preached numerous times at First Church in Boston, where his father had served. In 1829 he was called to be the minister of Boston’s Second Unitarian Church.

It is important to understand that as a formal movement, Unitarianism was brand new at this time. The Association was started in 1825, though a number of churches had started calling themselves Unitarian some years before. In New England, they had just split from the more orthodox Congregationalist churches. These Unitarian churches, though liberal for their day, were certainly Christian. They were redefining for themselves what it meant to be Christian.

At about the same time he was called to Second Church, Emerson became engaged to Ellen Tucker. Their life together was short and its intensity and brevity both shaped Emerson. Ellen died soon after their marriage. In Robert Richardson’s biography Emerson: The Mind on Fire, Richardson begins his very lengthy book with the story of Emerson visiting Ellen’s grave. It was fourteen months after her death and he had visited the grave practically every day. On this day he opened her coffin. We can’t know why he did this, or what effect it had. We do know, though, that Ellen’s death was a turning point.

He was already struggling in his ministry. His preaching, like his teaching, was inspirational. He did not, however, excel in his pastoral duties. In addition, he was troubled by his conscience. His thinking was quite a bit broader and more imaginative than it had been when he was in school. He rejected the forms of religion. He wanted no part of the sacrament of communion. When he went to the parish board and asked that he be released from responsibility for administering the elements, the board would not grant his request. It was not long after this that Emerson resigned his position.

He spent the next period of his life traveling in Europe, preparing for the next phase of his life on the lecture circuit. It was an important time for him. He met Coleridge, Wordsworth, and others. He felt confirmed in his maturing convictions by his visit, but also reminded that the most important journey a person takes is inward.

On his return he began lecturing and also assumed duties as a supply preacher at the Unitarian Church in East Lexington. He held this position until his lecturing opportunities provided a full living for him. He also attended church, when he was not preaching, at the Unitarian Church in Concord. In reviewing Emerson’s journals, one would have to wonder why he attended regularly—for his critique of the preaching was consistently unfavorable. Conrad Wright, Unitarian historian, notes that the level of his discontent was most pronounced during the period when Emerson was in the throws of making the decision to give up the pulpit in East Lexington. The historic significance of this is that this was also the period of time when the graduating class from Harvard Divinity School invited Emerson to offer their commencement address.

He seized this opportunity to share his growing concern about the church and its ministry with these new ministers and the faculty of the school. He hoped to stir them into receiving well his harsh and radical critique. That would only be true, it turns out, for a few of those present, most notably Theodore Parker, who would carry the mantle of Emerson’s vision into his own significant ministry. Most of those present were horrified. And there only being a few present in the small chapel, others learned of Emerson’s manifesto by word of mouth and later by reading the published version. The response was swift, and in its turn harsh, and was no doubt a cause of Emerson’s distance from the Unitarians for the remainder of his life.

Emerson said a great deal in the address, and said volumes more throughout the rest of his life—but I want to share the two critiques he offered the Unitarians about their brand of Christianity as a way to address some of his central ideas. First, Emerson complained that historical Christianity has been made into an overpowering, excluding sanctity—something distant and separate from us and our experience. In his words:

The time is coming when all men will see, that the gift of God to the soul is not a vaunting, overpowering, excluding sanctity, but a sweet, natural goodness, a goodness like thine and mine, and that so invites thine and mine to be and to grow.

Historic Christianity, he said, focuses on the man Jesus instead of the insight of the man. He was calling those present to, in his own words, “obey thyself.” Not to abandon, necessarily, the teachings of the great prophet or prophets, but rather to use those teachings as a tool to find one’s own insight.

His second complaint is related to the first. He said, “Men have come to speak of the revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were dead.” His dramatic language about the death of God predates the movement by that name by way over a century. Dramatic though it must have seemed, I don’t believe this was hyperbole for Emerson. He found the church lifeless. He despaired over the formalism and reliance on tradition. He believed that the moment an individual gave his or her own conscience over to anyone else, whether son of God, scripture writer, prophet, or sage—that the living faith was dead.

He used the word reason in a unique way to speak of the process of an individual’s coming to see insight from within. He also used the word intuition to describe this process—the only way, from his point of view, one might actually experience God. Understanding, by contrast, meant for him a mediated insight, drawn from another person’s experience. The former was of course the superior means of knowing, and indeed the only means to authentic faith. He said that historic Christianity’s dependence on the experience of others is an “injury to faith [that] throttles the preacher; and the goodliest of institutions becomes an uncertain and inarticulate voice.”

In some of the more moving words in the address, Emerson describes an experience he himself had in worship.

A snow storm was falling around us. The snow storm was real; the preacher merely spectral; and the eye felt sad contrast in looking at him, into the beautiful meteor of the snow. He had lived in vain. He had no one word intimating that he had laughed or wept, was married or in love, had been commended, or cheated, or chagrined. If he had ever lived and acted, we were none the wiser for it.

It was a harsh way to make his point.

And yet, though his complaints make up a fair portion of his address, his point, the passion he wished to convey, could also be expressed in positive terms. Emerson was pleading with the church, through these leaders and newcomers to leadership, to wake up. To come alive to the beautiful, even divine, world around them. He dared the new ministers to recognize their own potential. “Now man is ashamed of himself; he skulks and sneaks through the world, to be tolerated, to be pitied, and scarcely in a thousand years does any man dare to be wise and good . . .”

In his address he by no means gave up on the church as a vehicle for the transformation of souls. Balancing his two complaints he offers two “inestimable advantages of Christianity.” The first was the Sabbath. He said, “…what greater calamity can fall upon a nation, than the loss of worship? Then all things go to decay.” He praises Christianity for offering the Sabbath, “whose light dawns welcome alike into the closet of the philosopher, into the garret of toil, and into prison cells, and everywhere suggests, even to the vile, the dignity of spiritual being.” Amazingly, before he closes, he also praises the institution of preaching, seeing in it the opportunity to “cheer the waiting, fainting hearts of men with new hope and new revelation.”

Though he rarely used the pulpit again, growing comfortable with the lecture podium, you can hear in all of Emerson’s words that followed these an effort to do just that. And furthermore, Emerson awakened a portion of that generation of preachers, and later generations as well. His challenge forced the new Unitarian Association of Churches to broaden its inclusivity, even to include those who, with Emerson, had no need for Christianity as it had been known to that time, or even a formal understanding of God. It was a difficult transformation—but within a generation Unitarianism had evolved and in no small part because of Emerson’s thought.

Some might say, today, that formalism imprisons us. That our reliance on reason, traditionally understood, prevents us from the true revelation we might know through our intuition. Others might say, today, that Emerson’s influence has been too great. That his romantic ramblings are not vigorous enough. That his blind rejection of tradition and careless advocacy of rugged independence have left us with a disabling partial view. Or that it is dangerous to trust intuition more than the intellect. In his response to the early Unitarians of his day, Emerson offers us a counter balance of mysticism. A reminder that direct experience of the world is a necessary source for our spiritual understanding.

We are blessed in our tradition with strains of rationality and mysticism. If we were to take our religious heritage seriously, we might be tempted to find a balance. To use our heads and our hearts, our intellect and our intuition. In fact, I believe Emerson did this. In his passionate reaction to what he experienced as a dry and dispassionate faith, though, his words sound very strong to us.

In the coming months I will share other aspects of Emerson’s thought and work in our worship. We run a risk in studying Emerson. A risk he cautioned about. We risk giving him too much credit—turning to him and his wisdom as a substitute for searching our own hearts. It’s an ironic pitfall. Making Emerson a hero. Though he might have enjoyed it, he could not have advocated it. He would tell us to search our own hearts. Name the world for ourselves. To be and grow ourselves. May we receive this gift and experience this insight for ourselves. Thanks, Waldo.