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Every American has something of Emerson in him. — E. C. Stedman.

it.

The many cannot miss his meaning, and only the few can find Lowell.

The reading of him with understanding is a mental tonic. Brother Azarias.

Here comes our brave Emerson with news from the empyrean. — Carlyle.

All was known and familiar, as if I had thought or dreamed it a thousand times myself, and yet perfectly new, as if I were learning it for the first time. — Herman Grimm.

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Emerson holds fast to happiness and hope.
It was good to meet him in the wood-paths.
Emerson was a first-rate neighbor, and one
his fences up. ·
One of Emerson's neighbors.

Matthew Arnold.

Hawthorne.

who always kept

COMPENSATION.

1. EVER since I was a boy, I have wished to write a discourse on Compensation; for it seemed to me when very young that, on this subject, life was ahead of theology, and the people knew more than the preachers taught. The documents, too, from which the doctrine is to be drawn, charmed my fancy by their endless variety, and lay always before me, even in sleep; for they are the tools in our hands, the bread in our basket, the transactions of the street, the farm, and the dwelling-house, the greetings, the relations, the debts and credits, the influence of character, the nature and endowment of all men. It seemed to me also that in it might be shown men a ray of divinity, the present action of the soul of this world, clean from all vestige of tradition; and so the heart of man might be bathed by an inundation of eternal love, conversing with that which he knows was always and always must be, because it really is now. It appeared, moreover, that if this doctrine could be stated in terms with any resemblance to those bright intuitions in which this truth is sometimes revealed to us, it would be a star in many dark hours and

1. Define compensation. What is the difference between theology and religion? What are the "documents from which the doctrine is to be drawn "? In what "might be shown men a ray of divinity"? How could a belief in compensation help men

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crooked passages in our journey that would not suffer us to

lose our way.

2. I was lately confirmed in these desires by hearing at sermon at church. The preacher, a man esteemed for his orthodoxy, unfolded in the ordinary manner the doctrine of the Last Judgment. He assumed that judgment is not executed in this world; that the wicked are successful; that the good are miserable; and then urged from reason and from Scripture a compensation to be made to both parties in the next life. No offense appeared to be taken by the congregation at this doctrine. As far as I could observe, when the meeting broke up, they separated without remark on the sermon.

3. Yet what was the import of this teaching? What did the preacher mean by saying that the good are miserable in the present life? Was it that houses and lands, offices, wine, horses, dress, luxury, are had by unprincipled men, whilst the saints are poor and despised; and that a compensation is to be made to these last hereafter, by giving them the like gratifications another day, bank-stock and doubloons, yenison and champagne ? This must be the compensation intended; for what else? Is it that they are to have leave to pray and praise? to love and serve men? Why, that they can do now. The legitimate inference the disciple would draw, was, "We are to have such a good time as the sinners have now"; or, to push it to its extreme import, "You sin now; we shall sin by-and-by; we would sin now, if we could; not being successful, we expect our revenge to-morrow."

4. The fallacy lay in the immense concession that the bad are successful; that justice is not done now. The blindness

2. What was the preacher's belief in regard to compensation? 3. What is a fair inference from his reasoning?

4. What was the fallacy in his argument?

of the preacher consisted in deferring to the base estimate of the market of what constitutes a manly success, instead of confronting and convicting the world from the truth; announcing the presence of the soul, the omnipotence of the will: and so establishing the standard of good and ill, of success and falsehood, and summoning the dead to its present tribunal.

5. I find a similar base tone in the popular religious works of the day, and the same doctrines assumed by the literary men when occasionally they treat the related topics. I think that our popular theology has gained in decorum, and not in principle, over the superstitions it has displaced. But men are better than this theology. Their daily life gives it the lie. Every ingenuous and aspiring soul leaves the doctrine behind him in his own experience; and all men feel sometimes the falsehood which they cannot demonstrate. For men are wiser than they know. That which they hear in schools and pulpits without afterthought, if said in conversation, would probably be questioned in silence. If a man dogmatize in a mixed company on Providence and the divine laws, he is answered by a silence which conveys well enough to an observer the dissatisfaction of the hearer, but his incapacity to make his own statement.

6. I shall attempt in this and the following chapter to record some facts that indicate the path of the law of Compensation; happy beyond my expectation, if I shall truly draw the smallest arc of this circle.

Ų 1:|:

7. POLARITY, or action and reaction, we meet in every part of nature; in darkness and light; in heat and cold; in the ebb and flow of waters; in male and female; in the inspiration and expiration of plants and animals; in the

5. Where else does E. find the same false reasoning? many accept it? What contradicts it? 7. Define and illustrate polarity. subject?

Why do

What has it to do with the

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