Descended from a long line of ministers, a man of spiritual nature, a reader of Plato, of Augustine, of Jeremy Taylor, full of hope for his fellow-men, and longing to be of use to them, conscious, undoubtedly, of a growing power of thought, it was natural that Emerson should turn from the task of a school-master to the higher office of a preacher.  It is hard to conceive of Emerson in either of the other so-called learned professions.  His devotion to truth for its own sake and his feeling about science would have kept him out of both those dusty highways.  His brother William had previously begun the study of Divinity, but found his mind beset with doubts and difficulties, and had taken to the profession of Law.  It is not unlikely that Mr. Emerson was more or less exercised with the same questionings.  He has said, speaking of his instructors:  “If they had examined me, they probably would not have let me preach at all.”  His eyes had given him trouble, so that he had not taken notes of the lectures which he heard in the Divinity School, which accounted for his being excused from examination.  In 1826, after three years’ study, he was “approbated to preach” by the Middlesex Association of Ministers.  His health obliging him to seek a southern climate, he went in the following winter to South Carolina and Florida.  During this absence he preached several times in Charleston and other places.  On his return from the South he preached in New Bedford, in Northampton, in Concord, and in Boston.  His attractiveness as a preacher, of which we shall have sufficient evidence in a following chapter, led to his being invited to share the duties of a much esteemed and honored city clergyman, and the next position in which we find him is that of a settled Minister in Boston.

CHAPTER III.

1828-1833.  AET. 25-30.

Settled as Colleague of Rev. Henry Ware.—­Married to Ellen Louisa Tucker.—­Sermon at the Ordination of Rev. H.B.  Goodwin.—­His Pastoral and Other Labors.—­Emerson and Father Taylor.—­Death of Mrs. Emerson.—­Difference of Opinion with some of his Parishioners.—­Sermon Explaining his Views.—­Resignation of his Pastorate.

On the 11th of March, 1829, Emerson was ordained as colleague with the Reverend Henry Ware, Minister of the Second Church in Boston.  In September of the same year he was married to Miss Ellen Louisa Tucker.  The resignation of his colleague soon after his settlement threw all the pastoral duties upon the young minister, who seems to have performed them diligently and acceptably.  Mr. Conway gives the following brief account of his labors, and tells in the same connection a story of Father Taylor too good not to be repeated:—­