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09 - The Over-Soul - Essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson · The Philosophy Insights Collection

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The over soul, but sows that of his own good life partake. He
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loves as his own self, dear as his eye. They are to him.
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He'll never them forsake. When they shall die, then God himself shall
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die. They live, They live in blessed eternity henry more. Space is
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ample east and west, but two cannot go abreast, cannot travel in it
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too yonder. Masterful cuckoo crowds every egg out of the nest, quick or
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dead, except its own. A spell has laid on sod and stone.
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Night and day have been tampered with every quality and pith, surcharged and sultry,
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with a power that works its will on age and hour. There is
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a difference between one and another hour of life in their authority and subsequent effect.
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Our faith comes in Romans. Our vice is habitual. Yet there is
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a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them
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than to all other experiences. For this reason, the argument which is always
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forthcoming to silence those who conceive extraordinary hopes of man, namely the appeal to
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experience, is forever invalid and vain. He must explain this hope. We
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grant that human life is mean? But how did we find out that it
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was mean? What is the ground of this uneasiness of ours, of this
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odd discontent? What is the universal sense of wants and ignorance? But the
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fine innuendo by which the soul makes its enormous claim? Why do men feel
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that the natural history of man has never been written? But he is always
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leaving behind what you have said of him, and it becomes old and books
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of metaphysics worthless. The philosophy of six thousand years has not searched the chambers
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and magazines of the soul in its experiments, there has always retained, in
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the last analysis, a residuum. It could not resolve. Man is a
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stream whose source is hidden. Our being is descending into us from we know
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not. Whence the most exact calculator has no pressions that somewhat incalculable may not
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balk the very next moment. I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher
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origin for events than the will I call mine. As with events, so
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it is with thoughts. When I watch that flowing river, which out of
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the regions I see not pours for a season, It streams into me.
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I see that I am a pensioner, not a cause, but a surprised
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spectator of this ethereal water, that I desire and look up and put myself
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in the attitude of reception. But from some alien energy the visions come the
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supreme critic on the errors of the past and the presence. And the only
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profit of that which must be is that great nature in which we rest,
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as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere. That unity,
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that over soul within which every man's particular being is contained and made one with
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all other, That common heart of which all sincere conversation is the worship to
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which all right action is submission, That overpowering reality, which confutes our tricks
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and talents, and contains every one to pass for what he is, and
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to speak from his character and not from his tongue, and which evermore tends
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to pass into our thoughts and hand and become wisdom and virtue and power and
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beauty. We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles.
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Meantime within man is the soul of the whole, the wise silence,
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the universal beauty to which every part and particle is equally related. The eternal
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one, and this deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is all
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accessible to us, is not only self sufficing and perfect in every hour,
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but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle,
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the subject and the objects are one. We see the world peace by
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peace, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree.
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But the whole of which these are the shining parts, is the soul.
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Only by the vision of that wisdom can the horoscope of the ages be read.
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And by falling back on our better thoughts, by yielding to the spirit
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of prophecy, which is innate in everyone, we can know what it saith.
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Every man's words, who speaks from that life must sound vague to those
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who do not dwell in the same thought. On their own part. I
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dare not speak for it. My words do not carry its august sense.
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They fall short and cold. Only itself can inspire whom it will, And
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behold, their speech shall be lyrical and sweet and universal is the rising of
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the wind. Yet I desire, even by profane words, if I may
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not use sacred to indicate the heaven of this deity, and to report what
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hints I have collected of the transcendent simplicity and energy of the highest law.
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If we consider what happens in conversation, in reveries, in remorse, in
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times of passion, in surprises, in the instructions of dreams, wherein often
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we see ourselves in masquerade, the droll disguises, only magnifying and enhancing a
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real element and forcing it on our distinct notice, we shall catch many hints
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that will broaden and lightened into knowledge of the secret of nature. All goes
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to show that the soul in man is not an organ, but animates and
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exercises all the organs, is not a function like the power of memory,
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of calculation, of comparison, but uses these as hands and feet. It
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is not a faculty, but a light. It is not the intellect or
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the will, but the master of the intellect, and the will is the
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background of our being in which they lie an immensity not possessed, and that
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cannot be possessed from within or behind. A light shines through us upon things
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that makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all.
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A man is a facade of a temple, wherein all wisdom and all good
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abide what we commonly call man, the eating, drinking, planting, counting.
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Man does not, as we know him, represent himself, but misrepresents
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himself. Him we do not respect, but the soul, whose organ he
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is. Would he let it appear through his action, would make our knees
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bend When it breathes through his intellect, It is genius. When it breathes
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through his will, it is virtue. When it flows through his affection,
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it is love. And the blindness of the intellect begins when it would be
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something of itself. The weakness of the will begins when the individual would be
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something of himself. All reform aims, in some one particular to let the
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soul have its way through us, in other words, to engage us to
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obey of this pure nature every man is, at some time sensible. Language
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cannot paint it with his colors. It is too subtle. It is undefinable,
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unmeasurable. But we know that it pervades and contain us. We know
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that all spiritual being is in man. A wise old proverb says God comes
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to see us without bell. That is, as there is no screen or
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seedling between our heads and the infinite heavens, so there is no bar or
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wall in the soul, where Man the effect ceases, and God the cause
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begins. The walls are taken away. We lie open on one side to
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the deeps of spiritual nature, to the attributes of God. Justice. We
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see and know love, freedom, power. These natures no man ever God
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above, but they tower over us, and most in the moment when our
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interests tempt us to wound them. The sovereignty of this nature whereof we speak,
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is made known by its independency of these limitations which circumscribe us. On
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every hand. The soul circumscribes all things. As I have said, it
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contradicts all experience. In like manner it abolishes time and space. The influence
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of the senses has in most men overpowered the mind to that degree that the
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walls of time and space have come to look real and insurmountable. And to
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speak with levity of these limits is in the world the sign of insanity.
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Yet time and space are but inverse measures of the force of the soul.
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The spirit sports with time, can crowd eternity into an hour, or stretch
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an hour to eternity. We are often made to feel that there is another
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youth and age than that which is measured from the year of our natural birth.
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Some thoughts always find us young and keep us so. Such a thought
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is the love of the universal and eternal beauty. Every Man parts from that
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contemplation with the feeling that it rather belongs to ages than to mortal life.
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The least activity of the intellectual powers redeems us in a degree from the conditions
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of time, in sickness, in Languor give us a strain of poetry or
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a profound sentence, and we are refreshed. Or produce a volume of Plato
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or Shakespeare, or remind us of their names, and instantly we come into
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a feeling of longevity. See how the deep divine thought reduces centuries and millenniums
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and makes itself present through all the ages. Is the teaching of Christ less
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effective now than it was when first his mouth was opened. The emphasis of
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facts and persons in my thought has nothing to do with time, and so
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always the soul's scale is one the scale of the senses, and the understanding
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is another. Before the revelations of the soul, time, space, and
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nature shrink away. In common speech we refer all things to time, as
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we habitually refer the immensely sundered stars to one concave'sphere. And so we say
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that the judgment is distant or near, that the millennium approaches, that a
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day of certain political, moral, social reforms is at hand, and the
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like. When we mean that in the nature of things, one of the
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facts we contemplate is external and fugitive, and the other is permanent and connate
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with the soul. The things we now esteem fixed shall one by one detach
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themselves, like ripe fruit from our experience, and fall the wind shall blow
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them. None knows whither the landscape, the figures Bosston London are facts as
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fugitive as any institution passed, or any whiff of mist or smoke. And
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so is society, and so is the world. The soul looketh steadily forwards,
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creating a world before leaving worlds behind her. She has no dates,
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nor rights, nor persons, nor specialties nor men. The soul knows only
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the soul. The web of events is the flowing robe in which she is
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clothed. After its own law, and not by arithmetic, is the rate
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of its progress to be computed. The soul's advances are not made by graduation,
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such as can be represented by motion in a straight line, but rather
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by ascension of state, such as can be represented by metamorphosis from the egg
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to the worm, from the worm to the fly. The growths of genius
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are of a certain total character that does not advance the elect individual first over
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John, then Adam, then Richard, and then give to each the pain
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of discovered inferiority. But by every throw of growth, the man expands there
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where he works, passing at each pulsation classes populations of men. With each
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divine impulse, the mind rends the thin rinds of the visible and finite,
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and comes out into eternity and inspires and expires its air. It converses with
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truths that have always been spoken in the world, and becomes conscious of a
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closer sympathy with Zeno and Arian than with persons in the house. This is
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the law of moral and of mental gain. The simple rise as by specific
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levity, not into a particular virtue, but into the region of all the
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virtues. They are in the spirit which contains them all. The soul requires
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purity, but purity is not. It requires justice. But justice is not
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that requires beneficence, but is somewhat better, so that there is a kind
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of descent and accommodation felt when we leave speaking of moral nature to urge a
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virtue which it enjoins to the well born child. All the virtues are natural
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and not painfully acquired. Speak to his heart, and the man becomes suddenly
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virtuous. With in the same sentiment is the germ of intellectual growth, which
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obeys the same law. Those who are capable of humility, of justice,
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of love, of aspiration stand already on a platform that commands the sciences and
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arts, speech and poetry, action and grace. For whoso dwells in this
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moral beatitude already anticipates those special powers which men prize so highly. The lover
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has no talent, no skill, which passes for quite nothing with his enamored
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maiden, however little she may possess of related faculty, and the heart,
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which abandons itself to the supreme Mind, finds itself related to all its works,
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and will travel a royal road to particular knowledges and powers. In ascending
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to this primary and aboriginal settlement, we have come from our remote station on
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the circumference instantaneously to the center of the world. Whereas in the closet of
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God, we see causes and anticipate the universe, which is but a slow
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effect. One mode of the divine teaching is the incarnation of a spirit in
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a form, in forms like my own. I live in society with persons
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who answer to thoughts in my own mind, or express a certain obedience to
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the great instincts to which I live. I see its presence to them.
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I am certified of a common nature. And these other souls, these separated
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selves, draw me as nothing else can. They stir in me the new
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emotions we call passion of love, hatred, fear, admiration, pity.
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Thence come conversation, competition, persuasion, cities, and war. Persons are
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supplementary to the primary teaching of the soul in youth. We are mad for
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persons. Childhood and youth see all the world in them. But the larger
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experience of man discovers the identical nature of peering through them. All persons themselves
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acquaint us with the impersonal. In all conversation between two persons, tacit reference
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is made as to a third party, to a common nature. That third
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party or common nature is not social, It is impersonal, is God.
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And so in groups where debate is earnest, and especially on high questions,
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the company become aware that the thought rises to an equal level in all bosoms,
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that all have a spiritual property in what was said, as well as
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the sayer. They all become wiser than they were. It arches over them
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like a temple. This unity of thought, in which every heart beats with
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nobler sense of power and duty, and thinks and acts with unusual solemnity,
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all are conscious of attaining a higher self possession. It shines for all.
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There is a certain wisdom of humanity which is common to the greatest man and
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with the lowest, and which our ordinary education often labors to silence and obstruct.
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The mind is one, and the best minds, who love truth for
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its own sake, think much less of property in truth. They accept it
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thankfully everywhere, and do not label or stamp it with any man's name,
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for it is theirs, long beforehand and from eternity. The learned and studious
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of thought have no monopoly of wisdom. Their violence of direction, in some
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degree disqualifies them to think truly. We owe many valuable observations to people who
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are not very acute or profound, and who say the thing without effort which
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we want and have long been hunting in vain. The action of the soul
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is oftener in that which is felt and left unsaid than in that which is
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said in any conversation. It broods over every society, and they unconsciously seek
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for it in each other. We know better than we do. We do
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not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are
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much more. I feel the same truth. How often in my trivial conversation
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with my neighbors, that somewhat higher in each of us overlooks this by play,
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and Jove nods to Joe from behind. Each of us men descend to
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meet in their habitual and mean service to the world for which they forsake their
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native nobleness. They resemble those Arabian sheikhs who dwell in mean houses and affect
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an external poverty to escape the rapacity of the pacha, and reserve all their
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display of wealth for the interior and guarded retirements. As it is present in
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all persons, so it is in every period of life. It is adult
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already in the infant man, in my dealing with my child, my Latin
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and Greek, my accomplishments, and my money stent me nothing, but as
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much soul as I have avails. If I am wilful. He sets his
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will against mine, one for one, and leaves me if I please the
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degradation of beating him by my superiority of strength. But if I renounce my
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will and act for the soul, setting that up as umpire between us,
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two out of his young eyes looks the same soul he reveres and loves with
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me. The soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truth
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when we see it. Let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose. Foolish
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people ask you, when you have spoken what they do not wish to hear,
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How do you know it is truth and not an error of your own.
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We know truth when we see it from opinion, as we know when
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we are awake that we are awake. It was a grand sentence of Immanuel
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Swedenborg, which would alone indicate the greatness of that man's perception. It is
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no proof of a man's understanding to be able to confirm whatever he pleases,
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but to be able to discern that what is true is true, and that
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what is false is false. This is the mark and character of intelligence.
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In the book I read, the good thought returns to me, as every
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truth will the image of the whole soul. To the bad thoughts which I
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find in it, the same soul becomes a discerning, separating sword and lamps
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it away. We are wiser than we know if we will not interfere with
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our thoughts, but act entirely, or see how the thing stands. In
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God, we know the particular thing and everything and every man, for the
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maker of all things and all persons stands behind us and casts his dread omniscience
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through us over things. But beyond this recognition of its own in particular passages
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of the individual's experience, it also reveals truth, and here we should seek
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to reinforce ourselves by its very presence, and to speak with a worthier,
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loftier strain of that advent. For the soul's communication of truth is the highest
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event in nature, since it does not give something from itself, but it
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gives itself or passes into and becomes that man whom it enlightens, or in
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proportion to that truth he receives, it takes him to himself. We distinguish
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the announcements of the soul, its manifestations of its own nature by the term
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revelation. These are always attended by the emotion of the sublime, For this
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communication is an influx of the divine mind into our mind. It is an
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ebb of the individual rivulet before the flowing surges of the sea of life.
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Every distinct apprehension of this central commandment agitates men with awe and delight. A
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thrill passes through all men at the reception of new truth, or at the
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performance of a great action which comes out of the heart of nature. In
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these communications, the power to see is not separated from the will to do,
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But the insight proceeds from obedience, and the obedience proceeds from a joyful
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perception. Every moment when the individual feels himself invaded by it is memorable by
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the necessity of our constitution. A certain enthusiasm attends the individual's consciousness of that
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divine presence. The character and duration of this enthusiasm varies with the state of
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the individual, from an ecstasy and trans and prophetic inspiration, which is its
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rarer appearance, to the faintest glow of virtuous emotion, in which form it
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warms like our household, fires all the families and associations of men, and
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makes society possible. A certain tendency to insanity has always attended the opening of
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the religion sense in men as if they had been blasted with excess of light.
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The trances of Socrates, the union of Plotinus, the vision of Porphyry,
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the conversion of Paul, the Aurora of Baymen, the convulsions of George
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Fox and his Quakers, the illumination of Swedenborg are of this kind. What
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was in the case of these remarkable persons of ravishment has in innumerable instances in
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common life been exhibited in less striking manner. Everywhere the history of religion betrays
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a tendency to enthusiasm. The rapture of the Moravian and Quietest, the opening
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of the internal sense of the word in the language of the New Jerusalem Church,
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the revival of the Calvinist churches, the experiences of the Methodists are varying
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forms of that shudder of awe and delight with which the individual soul always mingles
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with the universal soul. The nature of these revelations is the same. They
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are perceptions of the absolute law. They are solutions of the soul's own questions.
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They do not answer the question which the understanding asks. The soul answers,
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never by words, but by the thing itself that is inquired after revelation
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is the disclosure of the soul. The popular notion of a revelation is that
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it is a telling of fortunes. In past oracles of the soul, the
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understanding seeks to find answers to sensual questions, and undertakes to tell from God
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how long man shall exist, what their hands shall do, and who shall
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be their company, adding names and dates and places. But we must pick
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no locks. We must check this low curiosity and answer in words is delusive.
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It is really no answer to the questions you ask. Do not require
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a description of the countries towards which you sail. The description does not describe
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them to you, And tomorrow you arrive there and know them by inhabiting them.
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Men ask concerning the immortality of the soul, the employments of heaven,
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the state of the sinner, and so forth. They even dream that Jesus
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has left replies to precisely those interrogatories. Never a moment did that sublime spirit
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speak in their patois to truth justice, love, the attributes of the soul.
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The idea of immutableness is essentially associated Jesus, living in these moral sentiments,
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heedless of sensual fortunes, heeding only the manifestations of these, never made
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the separation of the ideas of duration from the essence of these attributes, nor
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uttered a syllable concerning the duration of the soul. It is left to his
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disciples to sever duration from the moral elements, and to teach the immortality of
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the soul as a doctrine and maintain it by evidences. The moment the doctrine
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the immortality is separately taught, man is already fallen in the flowing of love,
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the adoration of humility. There is no question of continuance. No inspired
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man ever asks this question or condescends to these evidences, For the soul is
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true to itself, and the man in whom it is shed abroad cannot wander
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from the presence, which is infinite, to a future which would be finite.
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These questions which we lust to ask about the future are a confession of
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sin. God has no answer for them. No answer in words can reply
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to a question of things. It is not in an arbitrary decree of God.
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But in the nature of man that a veil shuts down on the facts
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of tomorrow. For the soul will not have us read any other cipher than
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that of cause and effect. By this veil, which curtains events, it
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instructs the children of men to live in to day. The only mode of
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obtaining an answer to these questions of the senses is to forego all low curiosity
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and accepting the tide of being, which floats us into the secret of nature,
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work and live, work and live, and all unawares. The advancing
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soul has built and forged for itself a new condition, and the question and
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the answer are one by the same fire, vital consecrating celestial, which burns
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until it shall dissolve all things into the waves and surges of an ocean of
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light. We see and know each other, and what spirit each is of
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Who can tell the grounds of his knowledge of the character of the several individuals
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in his circle of friends? No man, Yet their acts and words do
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not disappoint him. In that man, though he knew no ill of him,
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He put no trust in that other. Though they had seldom met authentic
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signs, had yet passed to signify that he might be trusted as one who
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had an interest in his own character. We know each other very well.
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Which of us has been just to himself, and whether that which we teach
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or behold is only an aspiration or is our honest effort. Also we are
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all discerners of spirits that diagnosis lies aloft in our life or unconscious power.
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The intercourse of society, its trade, its religion, its friendships, its
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quorls, is one wide judicial investigation of character, in full courts or in
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small committee, or confronted face to face. Accuser and accused men offer themselves
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to be judged against their will. They exhibit those decisive trifles by which character
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is read. But who judges and what not our understanding we do not read
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by learning or craft. Now, the wisdom of the wise man consists herein
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that he does not judge them. He lets them judge themselves, and merely
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reads and records their own verdict. By virtue of this inevitable nature, private
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will is overpowered and marger our efforts or our imperfections. Your genius will speak
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from you and mine from me that which we are. We shall teach,
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not voluntarily, but involuntarily. Thoughts come into our minds by avenues which we
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never left open, and thoughts go out of our minds through avenues which we
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never voluntarily opened. Character teaches over our head. The infallible index of true
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progress is found in the tone the man takes. Neither his age, nor
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his breeding, nor company, nor books, nor actions, nor talents,
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nor all together, can hinder him from being deferential to a higher spirit than
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his o if he have not found his home in God, his manners,
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his forms of speech, the turn of his sentences, the build shall I
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say of all his opinions, will involuntarily confess it, Let him brave it
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out how he will. If he have found his center, the Deity will
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shine through him through all the disguises of ignorance, of ungenial temperaments, of
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unfavorable circumstance. The tone of seeking is one and the tone of having is
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another. The great distinction between teachers sacred and literary, between poets like Herbert's
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and poets like Pope, between philosophers like Spinosa, Khans and Coleridge and philosophers
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like Locke, Paley, Macintosh and Stuart, Between men of the world who
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are reckoned accomplished talkers, and here are there are fervent mystic prophesying, half
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insane. Under the infinitude of his thought. Is that one class speak from
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within or from expans as parties and possessors of the fact, and the other
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class from without, as spectators merely or perhaps as acquainted with the fact.
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On the evidence of third persons, it is of no use to preach to
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me from without. I can do that too easily myself. Jesus speaks always
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from within, and in a degree that transcends all others. In that is
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the miracle. I believe beforehand that it ought so to be. All men
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stand continually in the expectation of the appearance of such a teacher. But if
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a man do speak from within the veil, where the word is one with
31:40
that it tells of, let him lowly confess it. The same omniscience flows
31:45
into the intellect and makes what we call genius. Much of the wisdom of
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the world is not wisdom, And the most illuminated class of men are no
31:56
doubt superior to literary fame, and are not writers. Among the multitude of
32:00
scholars and authors, we feel no hallowing presence. We are sensible of a
32:06
knack and skill, rather than of inspiration. They have a light, and
32:10
know not whence it comes, and call it their own. Their talent is
32:15
some exaggerated faculty, some overgrown member, so that their strength is a disease.
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In these instances, the intellectual gifts do not make the impression of virtue,
32:27
but almost a vice. And we feel that a man's talents stand in
32:31
the way of his advancement in truth. But genius is religious. It is
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a larger imbibing of the common heart. It is not anomalous, but more
32:43
like and not less like other men. There is in all great poets a
32:47
wisdom of humanity which is superior to any talents they exercise. The author,
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the wit, the partisan, the fine gentleman does not take place of the
32:58
man. Humanity shines in Homer, in Chaucer, in Spenser, in Shakespeare,
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in Milton. They are content with truth. They use the positive degree.
33:10
They seem frigid and phlegmatic to those who have been spiced with a frantic
33:15
passion and violent coloring of inferior but popular writers. For they are poets by
33:22
the free course which they allow to the informing soul, which through their eyes
33:27
beholds again and blesses the things which it hath made. The soul is superior
33:31
to its knowledge, wiser than any of its works. The great poet makes
33:37
us feel our own wealth, and then we think less of his compositions.
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His best communication to our mind is to teach us to despise all he has
33:47
done. Shakespeare carries us to such a lofty strain of intelligent activity as to
33:52
suggest a wealth which beggars his own. And we then feel that the splendid
33:58
works which he has created, and which in other hours we extol as a
34:02
sort of self existent poetry, take no stronger hold of real nature than the
34:07
shadow of a passing traveler on the rock. The inspiration which uttered itself in
34:13
Hamlet and Lear could utter things as good from day to day forever. Why
34:19
then, should I make account of Hamlet and Lear as if we had not
34:22
the soul for which they fell as syllables from the tongue. The energy does
34:28
not descend into individual life on any other condition than entire possession. It comes
34:34
to the lowly and simple. It comes to whomsoever will put off what is
34:38
foreign and proud. It comes as insights, It comes as serenity. And
34:44
grandeur. When we see those whom it inhabits, we are apprized of new
34:49
degrees of greatness. From that inspiration, the man comes back with a changed
34:53
tone. He does not talk with men with an eye to their opinion.
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He tries them, requires of us to be plain and true. The vain
35:02
traveler attempts to embellish his life by quoting my Lord than the prince and the
35:07
countess who thus said or did to him. The ambitious vulgar show you their
35:14
spoons and brooches and rings, and preserve their cards and compliments. The more
35:20
cultivated, in their account of their own experience, call out the pleasing,
35:23
poetic circumstance. The visit to Rome, the man of genius, they saw,
35:29
the brilliant friend they know still further on, perhaps the gorgeous landscape,
35:34
the mountain lights, the mountain thoughts they enjoyed yesterday, and so seek to
35:38
throw a romantic color over their life. But the soul that ascends to worship
35:44
the Great God is plain and true, has no rose color, no fine
35:50
friends, no chivalry, no adventures, does not want admiration, dwells in
35:54
the hour that now is in the earnest experience of the common day. By
36:00
reason of the present moment, and the mere trifle having become porous to thought,
36:05
am bibulous of the sea of light. Converse with a mind that is
36:10
grandly simple, and literature looks like word catching. The simplest utterances are worthiest
36:16
to be written. Yet they are so cheap and so things, of course,
36:21
that in the infinite richest of the soul, it is like gathering a
36:23
few pebbles off the ground, or bottling a little air in a file.
36:29
When the whole earth and the whole atmosphere are ours, nothing can pass there
36:34
or make you one of the circle, but the casting aside your trappings and
36:38
dealing man to man in naked truth, plain confession, and omniscient affirmation.
36:45
Souls such as these treat you as gods, would walk as gods in the
36:50
earth, accepting without any admiration, your wit, your bounty, your virtue,
36:55
even say, rather your active duty for your virtue. They own as
37:00
their proper blood royal as themselves and over royal and the father of the gods.
37:07
But what rebuke their plain fraternal bearing castes on the mutual flattery with which
37:12
authors solace each other and wound themselves. These flatter. Not I do not
37:19
wonder that these men go to see Cromwell and Christina, and Charles the Second,
37:23
and James the First and the Grand Turk. For they are, in
37:28
their own elevation the fellows of kings, and must feel the servile tone of
37:32
conversation in the world. They must always be a godsend to princes, for
37:37
they confront them a king to the king, without ducking or concession, and
37:43
give a high nature, the refreshment and satisfaction of resistance, of plain humanity,
37:49
of even companionship, and of new ideas. They leave them wiser and
37:53
superior men. Souls like these make us feel that sincerity is more excellent than
38:00
flattery. Deal so plainly with man and woman as to constrain the utmost sincerity,
38:07
and destroy all hope of trifling with you. It is the highest compliment
38:13
you can pay. Their highest praising, said Milton, is not flattery,
38:17
and their plainest advice is a kind of praising. Ineffable is the union of
38:23
man and God. In every act of the soul. The simplest person,
38:28
who in his integrity worships God becomes God. Yet forever and ever, the
38:32
influx of this better and universal self is new and unsearchable. It inspires awe
38:39
an astonishment, how dear, how soothing to man arises the idea of God
38:45
peopling the lonely place, effacing the scars of our mistakes and disappointments. When
38:52
we have broken our God of tradition and ceased from our God of rhetoric,
38:55
then may God fire the heart with his presence. It is the doubling of
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the heart itself, nay, the infinite enlargement of the heart, with a
39:05
power of growth to a new infinity on every side. It inspires in man
39:09
an infallible trust. He has not the conviction, but the sight that the
39:15
best is the true, and may, in that thought easily dismiss all particular
39:20
uncertainties and fears, and a join to the sure revelation of time, the
39:24
solution of his private riddles. He is sure that his welfare is dear to
39:30
the heart of being, in the presence of law. To his mind.
39:36
He is overflowed with a reliance so universal that it sweeps away all cherished hopes
39:42
and the most stable projects of mortal condition. In its flood, he believes
39:46
that he cannot escape from his good the things that are really for THEE gravitate
39:52
to THEE. You are running to seek your friend. Let your feet run,
39:58
but your mind need not if you do not find him. Will you
40:01
not acquiesce that it is best you should not find him? For there is
40:06
a power which, as it is in you, is in him also,
40:09
and could therefore very well bring you together if it were for the best.
40:15
You are preparing with eagerness to go and render a service to which your talent
40:20
and your taste invite you the love of men and the hope of fame.
40:24
Has it not occurred to you that you have no right to go unless you
40:30
are equally willing to be prevented from going. Oh, believe, as thou
40:36
livest, that every sound that is spoken over the round world, which thou
40:40
oughtest to hear, will vibrate on thine. Ear. Every proverb, every
40:45
book, every byword that belongs to THEE for aid or comfort, shall surely
40:51
come home through open or winding passages. Every friend, whom not thy fantastic
40:57
will, but the great and tender heart in THEE craveth, shall lock THEE
41:01
in his embrace. And this because the heart in THEE is the heart of
41:07
all, not a valve, not a wall. Not an intersection is there
41:10
anywhere in nature, but one blood rows uninterruptedly and endless circulation through all men.
41:17
As the water of the globe is all one's he, and truly seen
41:22
its tide is one. Let man then learn the revelation of all nature and
41:30
all thought to his heart, this namely, that the Highest dwells with him,
41:35
that the sources of nature are in his own mind. If the sentiment
41:38
of duty is there. But if he would know what the great God speaketh,
41:44
he must go into his closet and shut the door. As Jesus said,
41:49
God will not make himself manifest to cowards. He must greatly listen to
41:54
himself, withdrawing himself from all the accents of other men's devotion. Even your
42:00
prayers are hurtful to him until he have made his own. Our religion vulgarly
42:07
stands on numbers of believers, whenever the appeal is made, no matter how
42:12
indirectly, to numbers, proclamation is then in their maid that religion is not.
42:19
He that finds God a sweet enveloping thought to him never counts his company.
42:23
When I sit in that presence, who shall dare to come in?
42:29
When I rest in perfect humility. When I burn with pure love? What
42:34
can Calvin or Swedenborg say? It makes no difference whether the appeal is to
42:39
numbers or to one. The faith that stands on authority is not faith.
42:45
The reliance on authority measures the decline of religion, the withdrawal of the soul.
42:52
The position men have given to Jesus now, for many centuries of history,
42:57
is a position of authority characterizes themselves. It cannot alter the eternal facts.
43:04
Great is the soul and plain. It is no flatterer, It is
43:08
no follower. It never appeals from itself. It believes in itself. Before
43:15
the immense possibilities of man, or mere experience or past biography, however,
43:21
spotless and sainted shrinks away before that heaven which our presentiments foreshow us. We
43:28
cannot easily praise any form of life we have seen or read of. We
43:31
not only affirm that we have few great men, but absolutely speaking that we
43:37
have none. That we have no history, no record of any character or
43:43
mode of living that entirely contents us. The saints and demigods whom history worships
43:51
we are constrained to accept with a grain of allowance, though in our lonely
43:54
hours. We draw a new strength out of their memory. Yet press on
44:00
our attention as they are by the thoughtless and customary, they fatigue and invade.
44:07
The soul gives itself alone, original and pure, to the lonely,
44:12
original and pure, who on that condition gladly inhabits, leads and speaks through
44:17
it. Then it is glad, young, and nimble. It is not
44:22
wise, but it sees through all things. It is not called religious,
44:28
but it is innocent. It calls the light its own, and feels that
44:32
the grass grows and the stone falls by the law inferior to and dependent on
44:37
its nature. Behold it saith, I am borne into the greats the universal
44:45
mind, I the imperfect, adore my own perfect. I am somehow receptive
44:52
of the great soul, And thereby I do overlook the sun and the stars
44:57
and feel them to be the fair accident and effects, which change and pass.
45:04
More and more the surges of everlasting nature enter into me, and I
45:07
become public and human in my regards and actions. So come I to live
45:14
in thoughts and act with energies which are immortal, thus revering the soul and
45:20
learning. As the ancient said that its beauty is immense. Man will come
45:25
to see that the world is the perennial miracle which the soul worketh, and
45:30
be less astonished at particular wonders. He will learn that there is no profane
45:36
history, that all history is sacred, that the universe is represented in an
45:42
atom in a moment of time. He will weave no longer a spoted life
45:47
of shreds and patches, but he will live with a divine unity. He
45:52
will cease from what is base and frivolous in his life, and be content
45:57
with all places and with any service he can render. He will calmly front
46:01
the morrow in the negligency of that trust which carries God with it, and
46:07
so hath already the whole future in the bottom of the heart, end of
46:15
the over soul.