30THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
to whatever they may consider the divine.
Since the relation may be
either moral, physical, or ritual, it is evident that out of religion
in the sense in which we take it, theologies, philosophies, and
ecclesiastical 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 it in 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 that man with
justice. If a man dissemble, deceive, he deceives himself, and goes out of
acquaintance with his own being. Character is always known. Thefts never
enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls. The
least admixture of a lie — for example, the taint of vanity, any attempt to
make a good impression, a favorable appearance — will instantly vitiate
the effect. But speak the truth, and all things alive or brute are vouchers,
and the very roots of the grass underground there do seem to stir and move
to bear your witness. For all things proceed out of the same spirit, which is
differently named love, justice, temperance, in its different applications,
just as the ocean receives different names on the several shores which it
CIRCUMSCRIPTION OF THE TOPIC
31
washes. In so far as he roves from these ends, a man bereaves himself of
power, of auxiliaries. His being shrinks . . . he becomes less and less, a
mote, a point, until absolute badness is absolute death. The perception of
this law awakens in the mind a sentiment which we call the religious
sentiment, and which makes our highest happiness. Wonderful is its power
to charm and to command. It is a mountain air. It is the embalmer of the
world. It makes the sky and the hills sublime, and the silent song of the
stars is it. It is the beatitude of man. It makes him illimitable. When he
says ‘I ought’; when love warns him; when he chooses, warned from on
high, the good and great deed; then, deep melodies wander through his
soul from supreme wisdom. Then he can worship, and be enlarged by his
worship; for he can never go behind this sentiment. All the expressions of
this sentiment are sacred and permanent in proportion to their purity.
[They] affect us more than all other compositions. The sentences of the
olden time, which ejaculate this piety, are still fresh and 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.”
1
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, some-
times 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 imposs-
ible 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.”
2
1
Miscellanies, 1868, p. 120 (abridged).
2
Lectures and Biographical Sketches, 1868, p. 186.