146

ever came into general circulation, as had been engrafted on the Christian doctrine by the Fathers of Alexandria. The very books which contain it would have been lost forever, had they not been preserved by the Christian Church. Such is the difference between a Church and a School of philosophy; and such the difference between the founder of a sect and the Church's Christ!

But while we condemn this view of the Christian revelation, we are far from denying to Mr. Emerson all participation in the Christian faith. On the contrary, we affirm him to be a true Christian, in that sense in which one of the Fathers, we believe it was Jerome, declared Seneca to be a Christian, as an asserter, that is, of Christian truth and Christian principles. Among the distinguishing features of Christianity, we are ready to say the distinguishing feature is its humanity—its deep sympathy with human kind and its strong advocacy of human wants and rights. In this particular, few have a better title to be ranked among the followers of Jesus, than the author of this book. Humanity is the distinguishing feature, also, of his writings. Not the humanity now in vogue, which views mankind in the lump and has respect only to the race; but a genuine regard for individual man. The solidaire view of the human race is not the doctrine of these Essays. It is not the Christian view of man. We do not call it anti-Christian, but we find no support for it in the Gospel. The words and actions of Jesus do not look that way. They point in a different direction; they emphasize the individual soul. It is not society in its collective capacity, but man in his personal and private capacity, that Christianity contemplates and addresses. So far, then, as this point is concerned, we affirm that our essayist has drunk more deeply of the Christian spirit, than some who in these days put forth peculiar pretensions to the Christian name.

Mr. Emerson is by no means a denier of the Christian faith. If he errs in rejecting the form of revelation, he is very far from rejecting its substance and its spirit; very far from being a general unbeliever. That name belongs properly to those who reject not only the idea of a revelation, but everything that revelation contains, everything connected with the spiritual world. Mephistophiles de

scribes this class, when he designates himself as the spirit "that always denies." Mr. Emerson is not one of these spirits. We should rather characterize him as the spirit that always affirms. We lay great stress on this distinction. No prejudice, it seems to us, can fail to perceive the difference between such a writer and that class who deal wholly or mostly in negations, such as Byron, Rosseau, Voltaire. He is not a denier, but an affirmer; a sincere and consistent affirmer of moral and spiritual truth. It is of great consequence what a man believes, but of still greater consequence is it, that we do believe something with real and intense conviction. He who embraces a few great principles, with heart and soul, though he reject much that is worthy to be received, has a better title to be called believer, ay, and Christian too, than one who yields a feeble and politic assent to all that tradition prescribes, without converting the smallest portion of it into spiritual life. In this view, we pronounce the writer of these Essays a believer. One shall not easily find so great faith, no, not in Israel, as some of them manifest. We particularize the chapter on "Spiritual Laws," and that on "Compensation." It is this that constitutes the chief value of his writings, and makes him, although not generally ranked in that category, a more efficient teacher of morals, than most of those who Without any system,- for system is, once for all, no feature of his intellect, but with keen perceptions in his mind, and noble sentiments in his soul, he inculcates the great virtues of truth and justice, with a persuasiveness not parallelled in any modern writer known to us. What preaching can be finer than the following passages from the Essay on Compensation?

are.

'Always pay; for, first or last, you must pay your entire debt. Persons and events may stand for a time between you and justice, but it is only a postponement. You must pay at last your own debt."

receive a tax is levied. He is He is base, and that is the who receives favors and ren

66 For every benefit which you great who confers most benefits. one base thing in the universe, ders none." "The league between virtue and nature engages all things to assume a hostile front to vice. The beautiful laws and substances of the world persecute and whip the traitor. He finds that things are arranged for truth and benefit, and that there is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue. There is no such

thing as concealment. Commit a crime and the world is made of glass." "Men suffer all their life long, under the foolish superstition that they can be cheated. But it is as impossible for a man to be cheated by any one but himself, as for a thing to be and not to be at the same time. There is a third silent party to all our bargains. The nature and soul of things takes upon itself the guarantee of the fulfilment of every contract, so that honest service cannot come to loss. If you serve an ungrateful master, serve him the more. Put God in your debt. Every stroke shall be repaid."

Or this from the "Spiritual Laws."

Always as much virtue as there is, so much appears; as much goodness as there is, so much reverence it commands. All the devils respect virtue. The high, the generous, the selfdevoted sect will always instruct and command mankind. Never a sincere word was utterly lost. Never a magnanimity fell to the ground. Always the heart of man greets and accepts it unexpectedly. A man passes for that he is worth. What he is, engraves itself on his face, on his form, on his fortunes, in letters of light, which all men may read but himself. Concealment avails nothing; boasting, nothing. There is confession in the glances of our eyes; in smiles; in salutations; and the grasp of hands. His sin bedaubs him, mars all good impression. Men know not why they do not trust him, but they do not trust him. His vice glasses his eye, demeans his cheek, pinches the nose, sets the mark of the beast on the back of the head, and writes, O fool! fool! on the forehead of a king.”

We should say that moral philosophy was Mr. Emerson's peculiar province, were it not that the over-weight of the poetical over the practical, in his composition, disposes him to look at things too much in the order of the imagination, not in the order of the understanding; and to show virtue as a beautiful phenomenon, rather than to illustrate its practical application.

Mr. Emerson possesses all the intellectual qualifications of a great poet;-eye, imagination, language," the vision and the faculty divine." The reason why he has not fulfilled the destination implied in these endowments is a defect of temperament - an excess of purely intellectual life. To constitute a poet, there must be a certain proportion between feeling and intellect, between the sentimental and the sciential. Excess of one makes the enthusiast; excess of the other, the philosopher. The poet occupies a

When

middle stratum of humanity, combining the two. the reign of ideas, or the sciential tendency prevails in an age or an individual, the poet becomes a philosopher. Hence poetry declined in Greece with Plato and Aristotle; and hence so many poets of this age have turned from poetry to prose, in their riper years. With a little more activity of feeling, and a little less activity of speculation, Mr. Emerson would have made a first-rate poet. As it is, the little poetry he has published possesses rare merit. In point of vividness, melody, and force of expression, it is unsurpassed; in these days, unrivalled. The following

specimens may serve as illustrations of these qualities. They are not the best, perhaps, that might be found; but they are the only ones we have at hand. The first is from "The Problem."

"The hand that rounded Peter's dome,

And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,
Wrought in a sad sincerity.

Himself from God he could not free;

He builded better than he knew,

The conscious stone to beauty grew.

Know'st thou what wove yon wood bird's nest
Of leaves, and feathers from her breast;
Or how the fish out-built her shell,
Painting with morn each annual cell;
Or how the sacred pine tree adds
To her old leaves new myriads?
Such and so grew these holy piles,
Whilst love and terror laid the tiles.
Earth proudly wears the Parthenon
As the best gem upon her zone;
And morning opes with haste her lids
To gaze upon the Pyramids;
O'er England's Abbeys bends the sky
As on its friends with kindred eye;
For, out of thought's interior sphere
These wonders rose to upper air,
And nature gladly gave them place,
Adopted them into her race,
And granted them an equal date
With Andes and with Ararat."

Our next specimen is from "The Sphinx."

Mr. Emerson's poetry is a striking exception to the remark of Goethe, that "modern poets put too much water in their ink." He does not dilute his verse with the washy sentimentality which floods the pages of his contemporaries. He chants no lullabies for love-sick, life-sick souls, "sighing like a furnace;" but carols a lay that is tart and wholesome, and stirs the blood with a keen delight, like a draught of morning air. It was Dugald Stewart, if we mistake not, who explained the pleasure produced by rhyme, to consist in surprise. Coleridge rejects the explanation, and justly; but we are reminded of it in reading Mr. Emerson's poetry. A perpetual joy of surprise accompanies his strains. One has not the ennui of knowing, from long experience, what is to come next. As a poet, he seems not to belong to this age, but to mate with the singers of a former, more freemouthed and great-hearted race. Not that there is any affectation of antiquity, any disposition to ape an obsolete style. On the contrary, it is his originality that gives him