"Emerson,_Ralph_Waldo_-_An_Address" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emerson Ralph Waldo)

sensuality, is never quite without the visions of the moral
sentiment. In like manner, all the expressions of this sentiment are
sacred and permanent in proportion to their purity. The expressions
of this sentiment affect us more than all other compositions. The
sentences of the oldest time, which ejaculate this piety, are still
fresh and fragrant. This thought dwelled always deepest in the minds
of men in the devout and contemplative East; not alone in Palestine,
where it reached its purest expression, but in Egypt, in Persia, in
India, in China. Europe has always owed to oriental genius, its
divine impulses. What these holy bards said, all sane men found
agreeable and true. 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.

Meantime, whilst the doors of the temple stand open, night and
day, before every man, and the oracles of this truth cease never, it
is guarded by one stern condition; this, namely; it is an intuition.
It cannot be received at second hand. Truly speaking, it is not
instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from another soul.
What he announces, I must find true in me, or wholly reject; and on
his word, or as his second, be he who he may, I can accept nothing.
On the contrary, the absence of this primary faith is the presence of
degradation. As is the flood so is the ebb. Let this faith depart,
and the very words it spake, and the things it made, become false and
hurtful. Then falls the church, the state, art, letters, life. The
doctrine of the divine nature being forgotten, a sickness infects and
dwarfs the constitution. Once man was all; now he is an appendage, a
nuisance. And because the indwelling Supreme Spirit cannot wholly be
got rid of, the doctrine of it suffers this perversion, that the
divine nature is attributed to one or two persons, and denied to all
the rest, and denied with fury. The doctrine of inspiration is lost;
the base doctrine of the majority of voices, usurps the place of the
doctrine of the soul. Miracles, prophecy, poetry; the ideal life,
the holy life, exist as ancient history merely; they are not in the
belief, nor in the aspiration of society; but, when suggested, seem
ridiculous. Life is comic or pitiful, as soon as the high ends of
being fade out of sight, and man becomes near-sighted, and can only
attend to what addresses the senses.

These general views, which, whilst they are general, none will
contest, find abundant illustration in the history of religion, and
especially in the history of the Christian church. In that, all of
us have had our birth and nurture. The truth contained in that, you,
my young friends, are now setting forth to teach. As the Cultus, or
established worship of the civilized world, it has great historical
interest for us. Of its blessed words, which have been the
consolation of humanity, you need not that I should speak. I shall
endeavor to discharge my duty to you, on this occasion, by pointing
out two errors in its administration, which daily appear more gross
from the point of view we have just now taken.