Sunday, February 21, 2010

Sunday Transcendentalist Quote

From Ralph Waldo Emerson's address at Harvard Divinity School in 1838, as quoted in The Concord Quartet by Samuel A. Schreiner Jr.

The stationariness of religion; the assumption that the age of inspiration is past, that the Bible is closed; the fear of degrading the character of Jesus by representing him as a man; indicated with sufficient cleanness the falsehood of our theology. It is the office of a true teacher to show us God is, not was; that He speaketh, not spake. The true Christianity, --a faith like Christ's in the infinitude of man, --is lost. None believeth in the soul of man, but only in some man or person old and departed.


It's really no wonder that we have become a nation where most of us don't go to church with this in our past. But, I think the Transcendentalists would be disappointed in us as a society. We don't take the time and effort that we used to put into church and seek God in the woods or in our hearts.

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