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highest inspiration that came to him when a student at Oxford. He associates his influence with that of John H. Newman, who led in another direction, and carried others with him into the ultimate fold of formal and dogmatic Christianity. Matthew Arnold said of Emerson, that he is "a helper of those who would live in the Spirit." And is not this the Christian idea, that as moral and intellectual beings we should pass the time of our sojourning in this world as in the invisible Presence, and find eternal life in every service of love and truth, and in every act of duty?

If the writings of Emerson that touch the conduct of life be compared with the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, they will be found in charming correspondence, not in language and style, not in metaphors and parables, but in sentiments and ideas. The truth is the same, as might be shown in an induction of particulars. The same lessons are given from the sun that rises on the evil and the good, from the falling rain, and from the birds and flowers. And as Jesus said, "Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven," Emerson said, "Hitch your wagon to a star. Every man should be open to a divine illumination; his daily walk elevated by intercourse with the spiritual world. The highest revelation is that God is in every man. Milton describes himself as enamored of moral perfection. He did not love it more than I. That which I cannot yet declare has been my angel from childhood. It has separated me from men. It has watered my pillow. It has tortured me for my guilt. It has inspired me with hope. It is the open secret of the universe. The religious sentiment makes our highest happiness. It is a mountain air. It makes the sky and the hills sublime; the silent song of the stars is in it. By it is the universe made soft and habitable; not by science or power. The dawn of the sentiment of virtue in the heart gives assurance that Law is sovereign over all, and the worlds, time, space, eternity, do seem to break out into joy. This sentiment is divine and deifying.

It is the beatitude of man.

Through it the soul first knows

itself. It corrects the mistakes of the infant man who hopes to derive advantage from another, by showing the fountain of good to be in himself. When he says, 'I ought,' when love warms him, when, warmed from on high, he chooses the good; then, deep melodies wander through his soul from Supreme Wisdom. Then he can worship, and be enlarged by his worship. In sublime flights of the soul, rectitude is never surmounted, love is never outgrown. This sentiment creates all forms of worship. The principle of veneration never dies out. The sentences of the oldest time which ejaculate this piety are still fresh and fragrant. The thought dwelt deepest in the devout and contemplative East; not alone in Palestine, where it reached its purest expression, but in Egypt, in Persia, in India. Europe has always owed to Oriental genius its divine impulses. What those holy bards said, all sane men found agreeable and true. The unique impression of Jesus upon mankind, whose name is not so much written as ploughed into the history of the world, is proof of the subtle virtue of this infusion. On the contrary, the absence of this faith is the presence of degradation. What greater calamity can fall upon a nation than the loss of worship? Then all things go to decay. Genius leaves the temple, to haunt the senate or the market. Literature becomes frivolous. Science is cold. The eye of youth is not lighted by the hope of other worlds. Society lives to trifles."

As the Sermon on the Mount also says, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness," Emerson says, "When the sentiment of righteousness comes in, it takes preeminence of everything else."

Centuries and oceans intervene, but the voices of the prophet of Galilee and the sage of Concord are substantially one. Not that Emerson was always at his best, or always in harmony with the Lord. He sometimes wrote in a tentative mood and in

haze and mist, but his variations and dissonances are not so great
as appeared in Origen and Augustine among the ancients, or in
Luther and Calvin among the moderns. It must still be said:
"Our little systems have their day;

They have their day and cease to be;
They are but broken lights of Thee,
And Thou, O Lord, art more than they."

In fact, Emerson was in the line of the pastor of the Pilgrim Fathers, who told them not to rest in Luther or Calvin, that there was more truth to break forth from the word. He was in the line of the learned Puritan, John Owen, when he said, "Let new light be derided whilst men please; he will never serve the will of God in his generation, who sees not beyond the line of foregoing ages."

If the conception of Christianity as a continuous and present revelation be admitted, if goodness and truth be its essential elements, if all things excellent are different forms and faces of the One that is above, if "the majestical immortality of religion is to be gained by putting off egoism, by entering into God," in the language of Emerson, and if this language is of the same meaning with what Jesus said of self-denial, of the daily cross, and of faith, then we may give the idealism of Emerson the Christian name, and honor Emerson as a latter-day prophet of moral order in the world. It was the testimony of a close observer, Miss Elizabeth P. Peabody, that Emerson was "deeper in Christ" than even Dr. Channing. Carlyle said, "There is no man of whom I am so certain always to get something kingly." Now that misunderstandings are over, what in his lifetime his intimate and trusted friend, A. Bronson Alcott said, comes true, that, Emerson is "to be taken by the hand among all Christians as a brother."

We also honor Emerson as the ideal American. He never lost faith in his country. He was a democrat of the democrats, a

republican of the republicans. He cared nothing for parties, only for principles. "Politics" as a trade were a disgust to him; just laws and good government his only concern. He said in the Civil War: "Only the great generalizations survive. The sharp voices of the Declaration of Independence, lampooned then and since as 'glittering generalities,' have turned out blazing ubiquities that will burn forever and ever." He said, "America is the home of man. It offers opportunity to the human mind. not known in any other region; the open future expands before the eye of every boy; the tendencies concur of a new order. If only the men conspire with the spirit which led us hither, and is leading still, we shall advance into a more excellent social state than history has recorded."

XXXIII

ASA TURNER1

And Asa did that which was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God. 2 CHRON. 14: 2.

T

HERE is hardly a passage in Holy Writ that describes the life and character of a good man which may not be appropriately applied to our venerable father who now sleeps in God.

Like one and another of the patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, we may say of him, that he walked with God, as Enoch; that, he was the friend of God, as Abraham; that he was the servant of the Lord, as Moses; that he served his own generation by the will of God, as David; that he was a good man, and full of the Holy Spirit and of faith, as Barnabas; that he fought a good fight, that he finished his course, that he kept the faith, as Paul. We honor the Lord, we magnify his salvation, when we pay a merited tribute to one of his servants, who ascribed to divine grace all the good which he possessed and all the good which he accomplished. Such were his relations to the kingdom of Christ in our country, and his services in planting the wilderness with the institutions and principles of Christianity, that a memorial of them is eminently fitting and proper now his hands are folded in death, now that his form evanishes and is seen no more.

Asa Turner was born in Templeton, in the northern part of Worcester county, Massachusetts, June 11, 1799. His grandfather was a soldier in the Revolution, fought at Bunker Hill, was present at the surrender of Burgoyne, and at the age of thirtytwo years died from smallpox while the army was in winter

1 Preached at his funeral, December 15, 1885, at Oskaloosa.

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