The Enduring Significance of Emerson’s Divinity School Address

By John Haynes Holmes

The second defect of historic Christianity, according to Emerson, as he now stated it, is that it fails to use the present reality of God as "the fountain of the established teaching in society." Men speak of "revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were dead." This "throttles the preacher," who tells an old story, instead of revealing a fresh witness to himself. "The soul is not preached," cried Emerson. Only the dull, dead routine of an ancient time and a forgotten ritual! But religion should be as fresh today as it was in Palestine, and should be proclaimed as a first-hand experience, not a second-hand report. But how many ministers today remember that they are infinite souls, and that it is their business to make men sensible that they also are infinite souls? It was at this point that Emerson offered his famous definition of preaching—"Preaching is the expression of the moral sentiment in application to the duties of life"—and, in illustration of his definition, gave the immortal picture of the preacher whom he had once heard, who had sorely tempted him to go to church no more. "A snowstorm was falling around us," said Emerson, in this famous passage. "The snowstorm was real; the preacher merely spectral; and the eye felt the contrast in looking at him, and then out of the window behind him, into the beautiful meteor of the snow." This man had lived in vain. He had not a word that was real. As Emerson described this episode, more than one of his hearers must have speculated as to who this preacher was. Where had Emerson gone to church the previous winter? But the preacher was typical rather than unique. The performances of the Church "are like the zodiac of Denderah, . . . . . wholly insulated from anything now extant in the life and business of the people. They mark the height to which the waters once rose."

It is these two defects, said Emerson, coming now to his climax and conclusion, which explain "a decaying Church and a wasting unbelief." What can be done in the face of such calamity? "The remedy," replied Emerson, "is already declared in the ground of our complaint. We have contrasted the Church with the Soul. In the soul, then, let the redemption be sought." In the sounding of this music, what a trumpet Emerson now put to his lips! What coals of living fire he lifted from the altars of his spirit, and laid upon the lips of the young men before him! "Wherever a man comes, there comes revolution," "Yourself a new-born bard of the Holy Ghost, cast behind you all conformity, and acquaint men at first hand with Deity,” “Live with the privilege of the immeasurable mind," "O my friends, there are resources in us on which we have not drawn,” “I look for the hour when that supreme Beauty, which ravished the souls of those Eastern men . . . . and through their lips spoke oracles to all time, shall speak in the West also. . . . I look for the new Teacher that shall follow so far those shining laws, that he shall see them come full circle; shall see their rounding complete grace; shall see the world to be the mirror of the soul."