We love the venerable house
Our fathers built to God;

In heaven are kept their grateful vows,
Their dust endears the sod.

Here holy thoughts a light have shed
From many a radiant face,

And prayers of tender hope have spread

A perfume through the place.

And anxious hearts have pondered here

The mystery of life,

And prayed the Eternal Spirit clear
Their doubts and aid their strife.

From humble tenements around
Came up the pensive train,
And in the church a blessing found,
Which filled their homes again.

They live with God, their homes are dust;

But here their children pray,

And in this fleeting life-time, trust

To find the narrow way.

To sum up the whole history of the connection of Mr. Emerson with this church we may clearly see that though the public at large may have said bitter things of Mr. Emerson in 1832 the people of this church, the ones most involved, respected him, understood him, cherished him. I have already quoted one of Father Taylor's strong remarks; there is another on record, put there by Mrs. Horace Mann in a letter. She says that some called Mr. Emerson insane; many maligned him; but Father Taylor told some critics that Mr. Emerson might think this or that, but he was more like Jesus Christ than any one he had ever known. He had seen him when his religion was tested, and it bore the test.

The Second Church may well feel proud of its relations to one who could so impress differing minds with the nobility of his motives.

Various efforts have been made to classify Emerson, but he holds an original place. He has been

called an optimist; and that he was, believing in the tendency of all things upward, believing in a law of progress. He has been called a transcendentalist; which is partly applicable: he believed in a transcendent source of supply of truth and inspiration above experience, open to every one. He has been regarded a mystic; which is partly true: he believed in the union of man and God, as the stream runs to meet the ocean. He is ranked as an idealist; which is also correct: his ground of belief is always a spiritual world of which we and all things are but the manifestations. He is called a seer, by reason of his farreaching sight into phenomena; and this is right. Like Swedenborg, he believed in correspondences and analogies and degrees.

These designations mark parts of the man. But after all he does not belong to any philosophic class. He was an active, practical force; and will continue to be. I cannot find a better title for the whole man than the one I started with, one which my long study of his books most favors. He was a preacher; not in the sense of gown and desk and ritual; but in the greater and historic sense, from the times of the prophets, through Christ and his Apostles, who had no pulpits or churches, down to the voices of reformers and saints in the streets of modern civilization. If the true object of a sermon is to communicate life, Emerson's essays are sermons. If true preaching aims at rousing men and women to unquailing faith in the attainment of goodness and to the practice of righteousness, then our subject preaches vividly. If

the best work done for religion by the pulpit is to so present ideal virtues that humanity shall long to incarnate them in character, then Emerson has outstripped us all.

After all, we may ask, In what special respect are we justified in claiming that Emerson spoke throughout his life, for true religion? It was necessary at the beginning of this century, that a reform should be made in behalf of man, the present, this world, duty, morals, reality. It was a protest against hollow conventionalism; against the idle and fanciful views which sapped action, enervated character, and gave to superstition what reason and common sense alone should claim. "God in the human soul;" that was the watchword of two great minds whose splendor delighted the English world. Carlyle across the ocean, and Emerson here, set forth to preach the gospel of duty. They were preachers with a pulpit in every village and city.

Carlyle did a great deal for young men and women; but Emerson has done more. He was more openminded; he loved the common people; he read life closer and better. Both sought to make men listen to God in the soul; to trust instincts and intuitions; to listen to conscience; to believe in the dignity of human nature; but they came to different results.

Carlyle ceased to have much influence some years ago, but Emerson's books were never read so much as now, and they are destined to a larger fame. Carlyle came at last to scorn science; Emerson welcomes it: Carlyle was irritated by modern habits; Emerson adapts himself to them: Carlyle denounced the new theories of thought; Emerson saw in them evidences

of earnest labors: Carlyle dreaded to grow old; Emerson wore his years gracefully. The difference is summed up in this: One expended his whole store of faith in human nature and the world's progress, for it was not large; the other drew from a reserved, exhaustless supply.

What I claim for Emerson is, that he has been more consistent and true to his original views of life. He has been gentle, wise, inclusive. He has stretched. out his thought to cover a universe of facts and laws. His teachings apply everywhere, to all classes of people, to all experiences. He disdains nothing; scorns no one; recognizes God's image in every mortal; uses the language of Jesus, and speaks of a Power above, that is love and wisdom. It was Emerson who introduced Carlyle to this country, as Carlyle had introduced Goethe to England. All three were teaching the same truth of the reality of life, the nearness of God, the beauty and grandeur of Duty. They all drew the attention of the world away from the future life where it had been too long concentrated, and showed men the divine side of our present exist

ence.

You may ask, If there is so much of God in the human soul concerning which these men so amply taught, why do we need Christianity? Christ also reveals what is in the soul. His name is Immanuel, God with us. High above these teachers He stands, proclaiming the deeper truths of self-sacrifice and immortality. Christ does not exclude all that nature and the soul bring, but uses it, builds it up into character. How many in this world can trust themselves utterly? Are we not all ignorant, frail, liable to sin

and error? The voice within is often muffled; it misleads: the truths of Christianity are standards and tests. Christ becomes example. His system of belief is one that unites all scattered truths. He revealed our hope, our possibilities, and became the Way, the Truth and the Life unto that heavenly life which forever manifests God in the soul.

And now, as I desire to close my thought, how inadequate appear usual words and praise. The silence of the organ best chants the master's death. The fact that Emerson lives no longer is the most moving of all things to be said. But the treasures of his published wisdom abide. From them youth shall draw supplies of inspiration. Because of his words, nobler citizens shall appear, and the churches learn a holier law of catholicity. Like Longfellow, whose grave is still unturfed, he was in himself all and more than he taught. "He was incapable of bitterness; and in this doth his greatness most appear, that, having defamers, he heeded them not; persecuted by enemies, he hated them not; reviled by inferiors, he retorted not." Sifted by time's unfailing tests, the errors of his utterance shall be winnowed away, and the truth he faithfully sought to tell his fellow-men, shall be preserved. None more grateful for this discrimination than he. Napoleon said: "My courage consists in this, that my hand is immediately connected with my head." Emerson adds: "but the sacred courage is connected with the heart." It was this large recognition of thought and emotion, never so strong each as when united, that gave our subject's ideas their Christian fervor and power. No intellect, however kingly, dazzled his piercing eye.