Carolina QuotesNow, as Emerson turned to the active ministry, he tried emphatically to recover the original fervor of a Paul. When he later came to a parting of the ways with the church, he would see himself as a modern Luther. This personal identification with the great is for Emerson at bottom a hunger for a religion by revelation to us—as he would say in Nature—and not just the history of someone else’s religion. He wished to feel Christianity with feelings as strong as Paul’s. He did not wish merely to report Paul’s feeling as though such things were impossible in the modern world.
Robert D. Richardson Carolinian
Source
p. 90
- work
- Emerson: The Mind on Fire (1995)
- year
- 1995
- locator
- p. 90
Cite this record
“Now, as Emerson turned to the active ministry, he tried emph…” Robert D. Richardson. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-AF3F2FB8D7. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/af3f2fb8d7
More from Robert D. Richardson
To the question "What is God?" he now replies, "the most elevated conception of character that can be formed in the mind. It is the individual's own soul carried out to perfection."
If there is a single moment … to give meaning to Emerson's life, it would be this moment when he recognized that his proper response to the world must be astonishment, his proper expression celebration.
Each of these sides of Emerson—The Plotinus and the Montaigne-Bacon—requires the other side. The highest goals or ambitions are inevitably judged by whether or not one can take concrete, measurable steps to reach them, while the practical, workaday side of things is most interesting to Emerson when it serves or leads to something great.