“The wise will know thee and the good will love,
    The age to come will feel thy impress given
  In all that lifts the race a step above
    Itself, and stamps it with the seal of heaven.”

It seems to us, to-day, that Emerson’s best literary work in prose and verse must live as long as the language lasts; but whether it live or fade from memory, the influence of his great and noble life and the spoken and written words which were its exponents, blends, indestructible, with the enduring elements of civilization.

* * * * *

It is not irreverent, but eminently fitting, to compare any singularly pure and virtuous life with that of the great exemplar in whose footsteps Christendom professes to follow.  The time was when the divine authority of his gospel rested chiefly upon the miracles he is reported to have wrought.  As the faith in these exceptions to the general laws of the universe diminished, the teachings of the Master, of whom it was said that he spoke as never man spoke, were more largely relied upon as evidence of his divine mission.  Now, when a comparison of these teachings with those of other religious leaders is thought by many to have somewhat lessened the force of this argument, the life of the sinless and self-devoted servant of God and friend of man is appealed to as the last and convincing proof that he was an immediate manifestation of the Divinity.

Judged by his life Emerson comes very near our best ideal of humanity.  He was born too late for the trial of the cross or the stake, or even the jail.  But the penalty of having an opinion of his own and expressing it was a serious one, and he accepted it as cheerfully as any of Queen Mary’s martyrs accepted his fiery baptism.  His faith was too large and too deep for the formulae he found built into the pulpit, and he was too honest to cover up his doubts under the flowing vestments of a sacred calling.  His writings, whether in prose or verse, are worthy of admiration, but his manhood was the underlying quality which gave them their true value.  It was in virtue of this that his rare genius acted on so many minds as a trumpet call to awaken them to the meaning and the privileges of this earthly existence with all its infinite promise.  No matter of what he wrote or spoke, his words, his tones, his looks, carried the evidence of a sincerity which pervaded them all and was to his eloquence and poetry like the water of crystallization; without which they would effloresce into mere rhetoric.  He shaped an ideal for the commonest life, he proposed an object to the humblest seeker after truth.  Look for beauty in the world around you, he said, and you shall see it everywhere.  Look within, with pure eyes and simple trust, and you shall find the Deity mirrored in your own soul.  Trust yourself because you trust the voice of God in your inmost consciousness.