their very sincerity that causes
these seekers for a freer vision to strike down for more fundamental,
universal, and perfect truths, but with such feverish enthusiasm, that
they appear to overthink themselves--a subconscious way of going
Godward perhaps. The rebel of the twentieth century says: "Let us
discard God, immortality, miracle--but be not untrue to ourselves."
Here he, no doubt, in a sincere and exalted moment, confuses God with a
name. He apparently feels that there is a separable difference between
natural and revealed religion. He mistakes the powers behind them, to
be fundamentally separate. In the excessive keenness of his search, he
forgets that "being true to ourselves" IS God, that the faintest
thought of immortality IS God, and that God is "miracle."
Over-enthusiasm keeps one from letting a common experience of a day
translate what is stirring the soul. The same inspiring force that
arouses the young rebel, brings later in life a kind of
"experience-afterglow," a realization that the soul cannot discard or
limit anything. Would you have the youthful enthusiasm of rebellion,
which Emerson carried beyond his youth always supplemented by the
shadow of experience?

Perhaps it is not the narrow minded alone that have no interest in
anything, but in its relation to their personality. Is the Christian
Religion, to which Emerson owes embryo-ideals, anything but the
revelation of God in a personality--a revelation so that the narrow
mind could become opened? But the tendency to over-personalize
personality may also have suggested to Emerson the necessity for more
universal, and impersonal paths, though they be indefinite of outline
and vague of ascent. Could you journey, with equal benefit, if they
were less so? Would you have the universal always supplemented by the
shadow of the personal? If this view is accepted, and we doubt that it
can be by the majority, Emerson's substance could well bear a
supplement, perhaps an affinity. Something that will support that which
some conceive he does not offer. Something that will help answer Alton
Locke's question: "What has Emerson for the working-man?" and questions
of others who look for the gang-plank before the ship comes in sight.
Something that will supply the definite banister to the infinite, which
it is said he keeps invisible. Something that will point a crossroad
from "his personal" to "his nature." Something that may be in Thoreau
or Wordsworth, or in anot