st as
the ocean receives different names on the several shores which it
washes. In so far as he roves from these ends, a man bereaves himself
of power, of auxiliaries. His being shrinks . .. he becomes less and
less, a mote, a point, until absolute badness is absolute death. The
perception of this law awakens in the mind a sentiment which we call
the religious sentiment, and which makes our highest happiness.
Wonderful is its power to charm and to command. It is a mountain air.
It is the embalmer of the world.

It makes the sky and the hills sublime, and the silent song of the
stars is it. It is the beatitude of man. It makes him illimitable.
When he says 'I ought'; when love warns him; when he chooses, warned
from on high, the good and great deed; then, deep melodies wander
through his soul from supreme wisdom. Then he can worship, and be
enlarged by his worship; for he can never go behind this sentiment.
All the expressions of this sentiment are sacred and permanent in
proportion to their purity. [They] affect us more than all other
compositions. The sentences of the olden time, which ejaculate this
piety, are still fresh and fragrant. And the unique impression of
Jesus upon mankind, whose name is not so much written as ploughed into
the history of this world, is proof of the subtle virtue of this
infusion."[10]

[10] Miscellanies, 1868, p. 120 (abridged).

Such is the Emersonian religion. The universe has a divine soul of
order, which soul is moral, being also the soul within the soul of man.
But whether this soul of the universe be a mere quality like the eye's
brilliancy or the skin's softness, or whether it be a self-conscious
life like the eye's seeing or the skin's feeling, is a decision that
never unmistakably appears in Emerson's pages. It quivers on the
boundary of these things, sometimes leaning one way sometimes the
other, to suit the literary rather than the philosophic need. Whatever
it is, though, it is active. As much as if it were a God, we can trust
it to protect all ideal interests and keep the world's balance
straight. The sentences in which Emerson, to the very end, gave
utterance to this faith are as fine as anything in literature: "If you
love and serve men, you cannot by any hiding or stratagem escape the
remuneration. Secret retributions are always restoring the level, when
disturbed, of the divine justice. It is impossible to tilt the beam.
All the tyrants and propriet