a symbol. The life of the soul, in conscious
union with the Infinite, shall be for thee the only real existence.

This pleasing show of an external world through which thou art passing
is given thee to interpret by the light which is in thee. Its least
appearance is not unworthy of thy study. Let thy soul be open and thine
eyes will reveal to thee beauty everywhere.

Go forth with thy message among thy fellow-creatures; teach them they
must trust themselves as guided by that inner light which dwells with
the pure in heart, to whom it was promised of old that they shall see
God.

Teach them that each generation begins the world afresh, in perfect
freedom; that the present is not the prisoner of the past, but that
today holds captive all yesterdays, to compare, to judge, to accept, to
reject their teachings, as these are shown by its own morning's sun.

To thy fellow-countrymen thou shalt preach the gospel of the New World,
that here, here in our America, is the home of man; that here is the
promise of a new and more excellent social state than history has
recorded.

Thy life shall be as thy teachings, brave, pure, truthful, beneficent,
hopeful, cheerful, hospitable to all honest belief, all sincere
thinkers, and active according to thy gifts and opportunities.

* * * * *

He was true to the orders he had received. Through doubts, troubles,
privations, opposition, he would not

"bate a jot
Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer
Right onward."

All through the writings of Emerson the spirit of these orders manifests
itself. His range of subjects is very wide, ascending to the highest
sphere of spiritual contemplation, bordering on that "intense inane"
where thought loses itself in breathless ecstasy, and stooping to the
homeliest maxims of prudence and the every-day lessons of good manners,
And all his work was done, not so much

"As ever in his great Taskmaster's eye,"

as in the ever-present sense of divine companionship.

He was called to sacrifice his living, his position, his intimacies, to
a doubt, and he gave them all up without a murmur. He might have been an
idol, and he broke his own pedestal to attack the idolatry which he saw
all about him. He gave up a comparatively easy life for a toilsome and
trying one; he accepted a precarious employment, which hardly kept him
above poverty, rather than wear the golden padlock on his l