the Infinite Mind. He hears the comforting voice of God when bowed by bereavement. There can, in fact, be no clearer affirmation of the sacred right of communion with the Supreme Mind which belongs to every human soul than we have in the teachings of Emerson. And it is in communion that he, like Plato and the seers of ancient India, has a revelation of the glorious truth of immortality. Every man, he says, parts from the contemplation of the universal and eternal beauty "with the feeling that it rather belongs to ages than to mortal life." This is the experience that inspires the utterance of the Hindu sage: "By knowing Him alone does one pass beyond death." "What," Emerson writes to Carlyle, "have we to do with old age? Our existence looks to me more than ever initial. We have come to see the ground and look up materials and tools." When sorrow casts a gloom around his path he hears the divine voice:

"Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain;
Heart's love will meet thee again."

After Emerson's earthly career had come to an end, James Freeman Clarke began an address on his life with these words: "The saying of the liturgy is true and wise, that in the midst of life we are in death. But it is still more true that in the midst of death we are in life." An address on such a life could not have been more appropriately begun. What a wealth of faith belonged to him who could say with unquestionable sincerity, "We are all great, all rich, in God"!

In Emerson's capacious nature there is room for the expansion and alertness of the West, as well as the concentration and serenity of the East. While he has a pervading consciousness of the Infinite as the supreme reality, he also recognizes the reality of the individual soul. He has in a large measure the polarity which he attributes to Plato. "A man is a centre for nature," he says. "If there were any magnet that would point to the countries and houses where are the persons who are intrinsically rich and powerful, I would sell all and buy it, and put myself on the road to-day." He speaks most impressively of the value of human endeavor, of the need of using aright the opportunities of the passing hour, of the supreme importance of training the will. To the

seeker of spiritual enlightenment his advice is, "Work and live, work and live." "Sufficient unto the day are the duties thereof," he says. "A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace." "Do your work and you shall reinforce yourself." These are precepts which we in the East should inscribe on the tablets of our hearts. His ideal is the absolute harmony of work and worship, attained through perfect obedience to the divine will. Speaking of self-reliance, he says, "Let us not rove; let us sit at home with the cause. On the first page of his essay on "Self-reliance," we have the following beautiful sentence: "A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages." This inwardness, this attitude of listening for the accents of the soul, is of the East. "You are," he says, "preparing with eagerness to go and render a service to which your talent and your taste invite you, the love of men and the hope of fame. Has it not occurred to you that you have no right to go, unless you are equally willing to be prevented from going?" This, like Milton's line,

"They also serve who only stand and wait,"

is the very essence of the noblest ethical teaching of the Bhagavad Gita. For whatever the practice of the East may have been, the precept "work is worship" could not be more impressively inculcated than it has been in the Gita. With these devout spirits duty is but a form of communion. It must be acknowledged, however, that at times Emerson yields to optimism of the Oriental type and underestimates the need of human effort. He tells Carlyle that the truth can very well spare him and have itself spoken by another without leaving it or him the worse. Speaking of reformers he says: "Many a reformer perishes in his removal of rubbish, and that makes the offensiveness of the class. . . . They expend all their energy on some accidental evil, and lose their sanity and power of benefit. It is of little moment that one or two, or twenty, errors of our social system be corrected, but of much that the man be in his senses." Such language is disheartening. A man may well be forgiven a little flurry when

his neighbor's house is on fire. But such an attitude on his part is due, in some measure at least, to the insincerity and vanity he sees in many of those who assail existing institutions. And some of the most notable acts of his life are impressive object-lessons on the duty of courageous and active resistance to wrong. How noble and inspiring is the remonstrance addressed by him to the President of the United States when the Cherokees were about to be expelled from the state of Georgia! And, when Lovejoy was killed by a pro-slavery mob, we are told by eye-witnesses that Emerson's reference to him in a lecture as one who had fallen a martyr for the rights of free speech made a cold shudder "run through the audience at the calm braving of the current opinion." Great events powerfully affect great minds. The French Revolution made Edmund Burke lose his balance. The conflict with slavery enabled Emerson to gain the balance which he sometimes lacked. Dr. Garnett says that what rescues Emerson's optimism from moral indifference of the Oriental type is the fact that "his writings are full of the loftiest lessons of renunciation." But renunciation could nowhere be more impressively inculcated or practised than it has been in the East. It is righteous indignation and insistence on the value of human effort that deliver Emerson from moral languor. His faith in the greatness of man's destiny, his lofty ideals, and his sincerity inspire him with a passion for moral and spiritual freedom which nothing can subdue. To his own ideal he clings with unswerving fidelity. When he "rests in perfect humility," when he "burns with pure love," Calvin or Swedenborg has nothing to teach him. He feels that before the immense possibilities of the human race and of every individual soul, the greatest men the world has known shrink into nothing. He laments that even a Jesus should be "confounded with virtue and the possible of man." a stern independence, though he speaks in gentle accents and his bearing is meek. In this union of meekness and courage, of freedom and reverence, of an eager acceptance of the heritage of the past and a conviction that greater things belong to the future, of faith in an all-pervading Deity and a sense of the reality of human life and the responsibility of man, we have a most striking example of the harmonious union of the modern spirit with the noblest teachings of ancient times.

This prophet has

In India the influence of Emerson has been deeply felt by many of those who have received Western education. It would be well if his influence extended to larger numbers. But the loftier the aims of the teacher, the smaller the band of disciples; and many, it must be admitted, are repelled by the peculiarities of Emerson's style. At a time when Western ideas have such a fascination for us, we need the aid of such teachers in discriminating between what is wholesome and what is hurtful in them. He is one of those wise men who, while they have amply participated in the intellectual activity of their day, have resisted and rebuked its vices and follies, and who have contributed in a large measure to its noblest moral and spiritual tendencies. Amidst the perplexities created by the conflict of the past and the present, of the East and the West, he is a safe guide; and amidst the depressing influences of life he is an unfailing source of strength and inspiration.

The invaluable service that Emerson renders to us is that he recalls us from the vanities of life to its abiding realities. His power as a spiritual teacher lies mainly in the fact that every word he utters comes from his inmost heart, and he is himself loyal to the high ideal he sets before others. He awakened noble intellectual aspirations in others by his pen and voice; and he was himself gifted with a powerful intellect and a deeply thoughtful mind which were consecrated to study and high thinking. He said that love is the affirmative of affirmatives, and no man had a more tender heart than he. He was full of boundless hope for the future of the human race and of every individual soul. He was guided and inspired by unfaltering faith in the divine goodness and beauty; he was cheered by steady hope; and his was a love which, while it flowed freely forth on all sides, was in the intimate relationships of life tremulous with emotion tender as woman's.

Carlyle would often send across the Atlantic to his illustrious friend the brief but significant query, "Watchman, what sayest thou?" Next to seeking counsel of God, we cannot do better than turn to such a watchman, and ask him in all seriousness, "What sayest thou?"

THE ETHICS OF JESUS AND THE MODERN MIND1

DANIEL EVANS

ANDOVER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

Many times during the past half-century the question raised by Strauss, "Are we still Christian?" has been asked by other persons. The vast changes in thought which have taken place within this period have led to this. The difference between the ancient and modern thought-worlds are numerous, far-reaching, and now acutely felt. We live in a universe infinite in extent, eternal in duration, dynamic in all its elements, law-abiding in all its forces and areas, developing through an immanent process of evolution by resident forces, and moving on to a far-off divine event when the purposes of God will be realized in a perfected humanity.

Our fathers, on the other hand, lived in a world recent in the date of its origin, small in extent, and made by fiat; its laws statutes to be set aside at the pleasure of its maker; its nature deranged by the sin of man; the historic process degenerative; and its end catastrophic.

It is these differences in world-view which have made many persons ask the question, "Are we still Christian?" Have we not broken connection with the past, and even with the Christ who cherished the ancient world-view? Has there not come about a discontinuity in thought? Does not this break in thought involve also a discontinuity in faith? Can the spiritual content of the old world-view be separated from its framework of thought? Can the soul of faith survive the passing of this corruptible body of thought? To these crucial questions, some give negative answers, and confess that they can no longer call themselves Christians; they no longer consider themselves as maintaining the continuity of thought with the Christ of history.

1 Address at the opening of the academic year at Andover Theological Seminary and Harvard Divinity School, September 29, 1911.