This is what the late Mr. George Ticknor said in an article in the “Christian Examiner” for September, 1849.

“Mr. Emerson, transplanted to the First Church in Boston six years before Mr. Buckminster’s settlement, possessed, on the contrary, a graceful and dignified style of speaking, which was by no means without its attraction, but he lacked the fervor that could rouse the masses, and the original resources that could command the few.”

As to his religious beliefs, Emerson writes to Dr. Sprague as follows:  “I did not find in any manuscript or printed sermons that I looked at, any very explicit statement of opinion on the question between Calvinists and Socinians.  He inclines obviously to what is ethical and universal in Christianity; very little to the personal and historical.—­I think I observe in his writings, as in the writings of Unitarians down to a recent date, a studied reserve on the subject of the nature and offices of Jesus.  They had not made up their own minds on it.  It was a mystery to them, and they let it remain so.”

Mr. William Emerson left, published, fifteen Sermons and Discourses, an Oration pronounced at Boston on the Fourth of July, 1802, a Collection of Psalms and Hymns, an Historical Sketch of the First Church in Boston, besides his contributions to the “Monthly Anthology,” of which he was the Editor.

Ruth Haskins, the wife of William and the mother of Ralph Waldo Emerson, is spoken of by the late Dr. Frothingham, in an article in the “Christian Examiner,” as a woman “of great patience and fortitude, of the serenest trust in God, of a discerning spirit, and a most courteous bearing, one who knew how to guide the affairs of her own house, as long as she was responsible for that, with the sweetest authority, and knew how to give the least trouble and the greatest happiness after that authority was resigned.  Both her mind and her character were of a superior order, and they set their stamp upon manners of peculiar softness and natural grace and quiet dignity.  Her sensible and kindly speech was always as good as the best instruction; her smile, though it was ever ready, was a reward.”

The Reverend Dr. Furness of Philadelphia, who grew up with her son, says, “Waldo bore a strong resemblance to his father; the other children resembled their mother.”

Such was the descent of Ralph Waldo Emerson.  If the ideas of parents survive as impressions or tendencies in their descendants, no man had a better right to an inheritance of theological instincts than this representative of a long line of ministers.  The same trains of thought and feeling might naturally gain in force from another association of near family relationship, though not of blood.  After the death of the first William Emerson, the Concord minister, his widow, Mr. Emerson’s grandmother, married, as has been mentioned, his successor, Dr. Ezra Ripley.  The grandson spent much time in the family of Dr. Ripley,