I am very grateful to the Reverend Mister Sala for inviting me to your society this morning. Please forgive me if I seem somewhat out-of-practice as a speaker. It has been over a century since last I approached pulpit or rostrum.

It is indeed good to once again breathe the autumn air of New England. This crisp air was always a reminder to me that it would soon be time to again embark on the cars, riding up and down the Atlantic strand and as far west as cities could be found in my time. What a place this country has become! Content not only to sail the seas, you have navigated as well the vast expanse of the heavens, even to the very precincts of the moon. And some, as in every age, have discovered the greater journeys to be found, not in outward distance, but in the inner territories of the mind and soul.

Your efforts toward such exploration I commend. Mr. Sala has spoken well of your love of aesthetics here in this Universalist society, how art and poetry, two avocations near to my heart, sustain many here as well.

Before I proceed further, let me say that the opinions I will deliver to-day are my own and are not necessary those of Mr. Sala. (I learned over the course of many years that my thoughts may arouse some controversy, though that is never my intent. I wish only to express some of the inspiration nature and human nature have taught me and encourage my hearers to reason, to feel, to experience for themselves.

Much of what I have to say is taken from my previous writings. I have been “drawing on my savings” as it were. Some of it will be my new impressions from this brief visit to the 21st century.

Since some of my manuscript is of this very old material, I beg your indulgence if I occasionally slip into “he” or “him” instead of “he or she” or “him or her.” I most emphatically wish to stress that I regard all my general statements to-day to apply equally to men or women. I am, what you might call to-day, a feminist. After all, it is to my Aunt Mary that I owe much of the credit for early love of learning. She was not possessed of a formal education, but she knew well the great minds of her time. It was she who opened my mind to the Hindoo Scriptures and Neoplatonism. And, in my later life, my good friend and fellow philosopher Margaret Fuller, took away all doubt in me as to the full equality of the feminine mind when allowed to reach its true potential.

I must also warn you that I speak as a man of my time. The nineteenth century delighted in a certain civilized eloquence, a certain flair to writing, complex constructions of long, flowing (or sometimes meandering) sentences that would be considered “purple” or “flowery” in the twenty-first century. That said, I would suppose I was, to not an insignificant degree, even more convoluted in my grammatical architecture than the average writer of my time. My friend Henry Thoreau would have fared better now than I.

Nevertheless, some have found my lection worth hearkening to. I remember that a reporter for the Boston Transcript noticed that a washerwoman always went to hear my lectures at Fanueil Hall. He asked her if she understood me. “Not a word,” she replied, “but I love to see him standing up there thinking everyone else is just as good as he is.” 1 So I might wish you to prick up your ears to my archaic cadences!

I suppose Robert Fulghum, who, in your time, followed my example from the Unitarian pulpit to writing and speaking to the general public, seems to have mastered this “art of simplicity” in such a book as All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.

What are my general impressions of this time and place? It all seems very fast to me. People bustling along the street oblivious to other persons, the elements, the plants and animal life, heaven unfolding the season in front of them! And the motorcar! One of your contemporary lyric poets said it well, “Packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes, contestants in a suicidal race.”

But, from what I’ve seen, no time, as yet, has produced such a dizzying number of choices. Never before have so many been able to choose their way with such divers options. Woman has risen to a place of, not yet complete equality, but with a great choice in occupations besides housewifery. Persons may choose their religions, or lack thereof, with far less prejudice than ever before. Even “that love that dare not speak its name” in my day has begun to speak eloquently in a way not heard since the flowering of Hellenic Civilization. How that might have helped many a young college man trying to discover his own nature in my time!

And I suppose you might be interested in what I have to say on the subject of our Unitarian faith. You may be aware that I served, for a period of almost six years, as a Unitarian minister, first in a rather itinerant way, then at the Second Church in Boston. My father was a minister, as were several others among my ancestors.

I resigned from Second Church, giving as reason that I could no longer, in conscience, administer the sacrament as my parishioners understood it. You see, my mind, as a self-reliant man’s always must, was expanding thru experience and learning. I objected to how the Christian Church (and Unitarianism was much more a part of that body in my day than yours) the Christian Church had made the Nazorean into a very oriental demigod. In my opinion, “Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to what is in you and me. He saw that God incarnates himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his world. He said, in this jubilee of sublime emotion, `I am divine. Through me, God acts; through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me; or, see thee, when thou also thinkest as I now think.' But what a distortion did his doctrine and memory suffer in the same, in the next, and the following ages!” 2

I gave as my reason for the resignation the serving of communion. But my parishioners probably would have kept me as their minister even if I wanted to serve communion without taking it myself or dispense with it altogether. Deep within me, I think, upon long reflection, that my leaving the parish ministry had more to do with feeling bound to the forms, prejudices, worldview, and traditions of the church of my day. I was ready for another, a broader, part of the field.

But I never lost my love for, nor my high estimation of the importance of worship. “The Sunday is the core of our civilization, dedicated to thought and reverence. 3 All my life, I maintained a pew at Concord for whenever we went to church.

And I had much opportunity, over my course of days, to observe many kinds of churches. I observed, the “orthodox Christian builds his system on the fear of sin,--a part of human nature. The liberal Christian builds his upon the love of goodness,--also a part of human nature.” 4 In my time, and in many places to-day one aspiring after a place of worship has two choices, “The orthodox sect which is a society for the suppression of Unitarianism or the Unitarian which is a society for the diffusion of useful knowledge.5

Speaking of these two basic choices between what you might call Fundamentalism versus Liberal Religion to-day, “I [once] knew a witty physician who found the creed in the biliary duct, and used to affirm that if there was disease in the liver, the man became a Calvinist, and if that organ was sound, he became a Unitarian.”6

Though I did my share of criticizing what was (and is) sometimes a “corpse cold Unitarianism,” 7 it is yet with love that I speak.

If I have a regret in looking at Unitarianism today, it is its diminished size and influence, relative to the general mass of the public. Unitarianism yielded four Presidents in my century, but only one in the century just past. In the Boston of my day, there were dozens of Unitarian Churches, but only four to-day.

On the other hand, I mark with pride the clear influences of the Transcendentalism my friends and I espoused on the Unitarianism you know. You are not bound to just one text and one doctrine, but have considerable liberty in searching out Truth you each discern for yourself. Yet you might not know Transcendentalism by that name. What is Transcendentalism? I prefer to style it Idealism. It is simply a protest against formalism and dogmatism in religion, not a philosophical but a spiritual movement looking toward a spiritual faith. A poet I once knew, Walt Whitman, wrote, “Re-examine all that you have been told in school, or in church or in any book. Dismiss whatever insults your soul.” That is a fair _expression of the Transcendentalist attitude.

If I have a piece of advice to fellow Unitarians to-day, it is to “forget not thy first love” as religious people. Literary societies we may have, and caucuses for social betterment, but we need also the temple, the cathedral, the humble country or city church for worship. “The great object of worship is to explore the nature of God.” 8

I hope that you do not misunderstand me. When I speak of God, I do not refer to the God of the creeds, nor yet of institutions. To illustrate, I once heard a tale of two bishops sailing on a ship, who at the worst of a hurricane asked their captain if there was any hope. At his answer, “None but God,” they turned pale, and one said to the other, “And has it come to that?” 9

There are many in clerical garb, their names wreathed with degrees of theology, who would no more recognize God than the nearsighted man discern a rare avian specimen on a distant ridge. “God builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of churches and religions.” 10

I suspect there is many a self-styled atheist who have more knowledge of God than a cue of Harvard divines. God, to me, concerns himself not with fabulous miracles of far away and long ago, but with the everyday miracles of life, love, sensation, cognition, and inspiration. To recognize this is to have a realization of God. “Unlovely, nay, frightful, is the solitude of the soul which is without God in the world. 11

And none may know this spiritual nature, this God within, vicariously on your behalf. “It is by yourself without ambassador that God speaks to you. You are as one who has a private door that leads him to the king’s chamber. You have learned nothing rightly that you have not learned so.” 12 I wish I had met that Unitarian scientist who lived between your time and mine, R. Buckminster Fuller. He said, “No more secondhand God.” A sublime saying, indeed!

Ms. Carlsen was kind enough to quote from a sermon of mine earlier to-day. In it, I mentioned experimental religion. Shall we not turn to the world of Spirit with the same open attitude of inquiry we turn with Science to the world of Nature? “Is not prayer also a study of truth—a sally of the soul into the unfound infinity? No man ever prayed hard without learning something.” 13

Indeed, it is in nature that we find “the world is not painted, or adorned, but is from the beginning beautiful; and God has not made some beautiful things, but Beauty is the creator of the universe.” 14

Such is my conviction. Yet I realize that the exercise of what you call in your Principles, “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning,” will inevitably give rise to a number of divergent opinions. Let us meet difference, not with harshness, but with mutual respect and open conversation.

Once, I addressed a literary society during commencement at Middlebury, Vermont. When I finished, the president of the society asked a clergyman to conclude the service with a prayer. A Massachusetts minister went into the pulpit I had just left and prayed, “We beseech thee, O Lord, to deliver us from hearing any more such transcendental nonsense as we have just listened to from this sacred desk.” After the benediction, I turned to a man next to him and asked the name of that clergyman. Then, I said, “He seemed a very conscientious, plain-spoken man” and I went my way. I tell this story not to praise myself but to encourage in others toward an acceptance of others views on which I worked many years.

As I once wrote Professor Ware, “These things look thus to me! To you, otherwise. Let us say out our uttermost word, and let the all-pervading truth, as it surely will, judge between us.” Let us meet difference, not with harshness, but with mutual respect and open conversation.

I regret that I cannot abide with you in your continuing conversation. My time beckons and I must return. It reminds me of a poem I wrote so many years ago. It’s theme is that every beauty of nature has its place and setting, you and I no less:

The delicate shells lay on the shore;
The bubbles of the latest wave
Fresh pearls to their enamel gave,
And the bellowing of the savage sea
Greeted their safe escape to me.
I wiped away the weeds and foam,
I fetched my sea-born treasures home;
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore
With the sun and the sand and the wild uproar. 15

Adieu!

Notes:

1	“Emerson as Preacher,” in The Genius and Character of Emerson
2	“Divinity School Address,” 1838
3	“Character,” 1844.
4	“Philosophy of History: Society,” 1837
5	Journals, 1831
6	“Experience,” 1844
7	notes, “Divinity School Address,” 1838
8	Sermon “The Ministry: A Year’s Retrospect,” 1830
9	Notes, “Fate,” Works, vol. 6, p. 345
10	“Worship,” 1860
11	“The Preacher,” 1867
12	Journals, 1831
13	Nature, 1836
14	“The Poet”
15	"Each and All"