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

occasion, any complaisance would be criminal, which told you, whose
hope and commission it is to preach the faith of Christ, that the
faith of Christ is preached.

It is time that this ill-suppressed murmur of all thoughtful
men against the famine of our churches; this moaning of the heart
because it is bereaved of the consolation, the hope, the grandeur,
that come alone out of the culture of the moral nature; should be
heard through the sleep of indolence, and over the din of routine.
This great and perpetual office of the preacher is not discharged.
Preaching is the expression of the moral sentiment in application to
the duties of life. In how many churches, by how many prophets, tell
me, is man made sensible that he is an infinite Soul; that the earth
and heavens are passing into his mind; that he is drinking forever
the soul of God? Where now sounds the persuasion, that by its very
melody imparadises my heart, and so affirms its own origin in heaven?
Where shall I hear words such as in elder ages drew men to leave all
and follow, -- father and mother, house and land, wife and child?
Where shall I hear these august laws of moral being so pronounced, as
to fill my ear, and I feel ennobled by the offer of my uttermost
action and passion? The test of the true faith, certainly, should be
its power to charm and command the soul, as the laws of nature
control the activity of the hands, -- so commanding that we find
pleasure and honor in obeying. The faith should blend with the light
of rising and of setting suns, with the flying cloud, the singing
bird, and the breath of flowers. But now the priest's Sabbath has
lost the splendor of nature; it is unlovely; we are glad when it is
done; we can make, we do make, even sitting in our pews, a far
better, holier, sweeter, for ourselves.

Whenever the pulpit is usurped by a formalist, then is the
worshipper defrauded and disconsolate. We shrink as soon as the
prayers begin, which do not uplift, but smite and offend us. We are
fain to wrap our cloaks about us, and secure, as best we can, a
solitude that hears not. I once heard a preacher who sorely tempted
me to say, I would go to church no more. Men go, thought I, where
they are wont to go, else had no soul entered the temple in the
afternoon. A snow storm was falling around us. The snow storm was
real; the preacher merely spectral; and the eye felt the sad contrast
in looking at him, and then out of the window behind him, into the
beautiful meteor of the snow. He had lived in vain. He had no one
word intimating that he had laughed or wept, was married or in love,
had been commended, or cheated, or chagrined. If he had ever lived
and acted, we were none the wiser for it. The capital secret of his
profession, namely, to convert life into truth, he had not learned.
Not one fact in all his experience, had he yet imported into his
doctrine. This man had ploughed, and planted, and talked, and
bought, and sold; he had read books; he had eaten and drunken; his
head aches; his heart throbs; he smiles and suffers; yet was there
not a surmise, a hint, in all the discourse, that he had ever lived