Without superstitious reference to the Bible - indeed, without the slightest veneration of any scripture - Emerson yet writes in the tradition of the wisdom literature of the Old Testament, of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. He is concerned, as the prophets were, with the relation of spirit and human behavior, of right seeing and right living, the perfection of justice, and the power that comes into human beings when they yield to the truth. Too polite and civilized to be a Jeremiah in style, Emerson nevertheless sees his audience as worshiping false gods and as laboring under a compensatory punishment for their general disloyalty to the regime of spirit. His work is restoration. He finds the sacred quarantined in small religious redoubts, calls it out, makes it credible, and broadcasts it lavishly over the landscape. We watch this process in astonishment.