Ralph Waldo Emerson

From OUR UNITARIAN HERITAGE, 1925 by Earl Morse Wilbur

.   .   .   Emerson is generally remembered to-day simply as an American man of letters ; but for a number of years he was himself a Unitarian minister. He was descended from eight generations of Puritan ministers, and his father, the Rev. William Emerson, had been minister of the First Church in Boston, and one of the liberals of his time, though he died before the division of the churches occurred. After leaving the Divinity School, Emerson was for three years and a half minister of the Second Church in Boston, from which he resigned in 1832 because he did not feel that he could conscientiously celebrate the Lord's Supper with the meaning then attached to it. Though he still continued for some years to preach more or less often, he was never settled over another church, but became more and more a lecturer and writer.

In the summer of 1838 Emerson, now rapidly coming into fame for his work on the lecture platform, was invited to preach the sermon before the graduating class of the Divinity School. Only a small roomful were present, but the address they heard began a new era in American Unitarianism. He brought his young hearers the message of Transcendentalism as applied to region. (etc)

There were those that appreciated the message of Emerson's address at once. Theodore Parker was one of these, and he wrote of it, "It was the noblest, the most inspiring strain I ever listened to." Others among the younger ministers were glad to have so earnestly and clearly said in public what they had been vaguely feeling and thinking to themselves. Few who read Emerson's address to-day will find in it anything to shock them, or even much to attract attention for its novelty. But the older heads at once saw what was involved in his message, and were filled with consternation that young men about to enter the ministry should have been given advice which, it was felt, was in danger of undermining their whole Christian faith. The address could not be allowed to pas unrebuked.   .  .   .   Unitarian ministers' meetings debated whether Emerson were Christian, pantheist, or atheist ; and writers in various newspapers attacked him.

" To all these attacks Emerson made no reply, refusing to be drawn into controversy.   "   (p. 435)

Boston : Beacon Press 1925, pp. 433-35.