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made up of the constitutions of God and the creatures of God, so there is no one who can reasonably deny himself to the calls which in the economy of the world he was provided with the means of satisfying. The true check of this principle is to be found in another general law— that each is to serve his fellow-men in that way he best The olive is not bound to leave yielding his fruit, and go and reign over the trees; neither is the astronomer, the artist, or the poet to quit his work that he may do the errands of Howard, or second the efforts of Wilberforce."

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In this last citation from Charles Emerson's "Notes" we find the sum and substance of the practical philosophy of that brother of his with whom we have mainly to do. He has striven faithfully to serve his day and generation, and coming days and generations, in the way in which best he could. He has by no means stood aloof from taking part in the stirring questions of the time, and, in regard to them, has often taken the unpopular side, but always the right one. But his real life-work has been that of a thinker, dwelling in the severe realm of the ideal, and enunciating almost oracularly thoughts which he deemed it for the good of men that they should be aware of.

Something must now be said of the circumstances and influences by, through, or sometimes in spite of which Ralph Waldo Emerson came to be the manner of man which he is.

His father died when the boy was eight years

old, and the care of the household fell upon his excellent mother and her devoted daughter. He was trained in the public schools of Boston, where he made good progress, and was sometimes called upon to recite original poems at school exhibitions. In 1817, he being fourteen years of age, he entered Harvard College, where his elder brother had preceded him two or three years before. His college career, measured by ordinary academical rules, was not a very brilliant one. His renderings of the Greek and Latin classics were indeed quite above those of the majority of his classmates; of those who could go better through the declensions and conjugations, and give more accurately the rules of grammar and accidence. But we are told that "in philosophy he did very poorly, and mathematics were his utter despair." In certain other respects he stood well up in his class-ranking higher in the estimation of the students than upon the rolls of the Faculty. He made good use of the college library, which, although it then contained barely twenty-five thousand volumes, was the largest in the country. We are told that "he read and re-read the early English dramatists, and knew Shakspeare almost by heart." He also showed decided talent for composition and declamation, and in his junior year gained the first prize for an essay upon the "Character of Socrates," and in his senior year the second prize for an essay upon

"The Present State of Ethical Philosophy." These facts indicate that he must have really studied the higher forms of philosophy to good purpose, even though he received low marks for his formal recitations. He was also the poet of his class upon "Class-Day." Still, his general standing was little if any above the middle of his class. Of the sixty members, about half received places in the public Commencement exercises. The part assigned to Emerson was one in a "Conference on the Characters of John Knox, William Penn, and John Wesley," Emerson setting forth the paramount claims of the Scottish reformer. But his standing was not such as to gain for him an election to the Phi Beta Kappa Society, which admitted only those who were esteemed to be the best scholars of the successive classes.

He graduated in 1821, being seventeen years of age. His elder brother had in the mean while established a school in Boston, in which Ralph became a teacher for several years. He looked forward to the Christian ministry as his vocation in life, and set about the study of theology, without, however, entering the Cambridge Divinity School, the recognized avenue of approach to the Unitarian ministry. Notwithstanding this, he was in 1826 "approbated to preach" by the Middlesex Association. But, his health having become impaired, he passed a winter in the South. Returning to New England, his character and attainments

must have come to be appreciated; for, in 1829, he was called to the important position of colleague to Henry Ware in the pastorate of the Second Church (Unitarian) of Boston. A year after this Mr. Ware resigned in order to become Professor of Pulpit Eloquence and Pastor of Harvard College, and Emerson became sole minister of the Second Church of Boston. In 1830 he married Ellen Louisa Tucker, of Boston, who died within a year after their marriage.

III.

IN THE MINISTRY.

EMERSON'S career as a clergyman lasted about four years. That his duties were faithfully and acceptably performed is abundantly evinced by the circumstances which occasioned his resignation of the pastorate, and his virtual abandonment of the sacred office. Of his sermons only one, as far as we know, has ever been published, and that only four years ago as an appendix to Mr. Frothingham's "Transcendentalism in New England." It was his farewell discourse to the people of his charge, and the last sermon which he ever preached. It is worthy of somewhat ex

tended mention, as indicating some important modifications which had taken place in his theological views, and as marking the turning-point in his career of life.

He had come to more than doubt the authority and even the usefulness of the Christian rite of the Lord's Supper. His objections to it did not rest at all upon the mysterious doctrines of Transubstantiation and Consubstantiation, for which so many men have been sent to the stake, and have sent others to the stake. He was quite willing to let others understand in their own way the meaning of the words, "This is my body," if so be they could thereby gain any spiritual good. His own objections to the present practice of the ordinance lay far deeper than any mere question as to the form of administering it. In his view the rite was never instituted by Jesus as a permanent one for his followers through the ages; and whatever of usefulness it may have had in the olden time, this had passed away; and for him at least, it was an outworn garment to be flung aside. The sacerdotal blessing of the bread and wine was a ceremony in which he could no longer take part. He hoped, indeed, that some better form of commemoration of the death of Jesus might be devised, in which he could conscientiously take part. The congregation did not agree with him, but decided unanimously that the rite should be administered as it had always been with them.

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