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Poetry, Personality, and the Divinity School Address

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

David M. Robinson
David M. Robinson
Affiliation:
Oregon State University
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Extract

The April before he delivered his address at the Divinity School, Emerson had traveled into Cambridge to discuss “theism” with some of the Divinity School students. Although he was not usually reluctant to let his views be known, he went to this meeting “rather heavy-hearted,” fearing that what he had to say about theism would not be warmly received. “I always find,” he confessed, “that my views chill or shock people at the first opening.” But this conversation must have gone well. Emerson came away from it “cheered,” and remembered one point that seemed to impress the students favorably:

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 82 , Issue 2 , April 1989 , pp. 185 - 200
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1989

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References

* This lecture was delivered at Harvard Divinity School on 14 April 1988, to commemorate the 150th Anniversary of Emerson's Divinity School Address. I would like to thank the Harvard Divinity School and the Unitarian Universalist Historical Society for sponsoring the lecture. Part of the research for this lecture was supported by a grant from the American Philosophical Society, which I gratefully acknowledge.

1 The following standard abbreviations to Emerson's works will be used throughout for parenthetical documentation: CW = The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (ed. Spiller, Robert E., et al.; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971 –)Google Scholar; EL = The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson (ed. Whicher, Stephen E., Spiller, Robert E., and Williams, Wallace E.; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959–1971)Google Scholar; JMN = The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson (ed. Gilman, William H., et al.; Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960–1982)Google Scholar; L = The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson (ed. Rusk, Ralph L.; New York: Columbia University Press, 1939).Google Scholar

2 Wright, Conrad, “Emerson, Barzillai Frost, and the Divinity School Address,” in idem, The Liberal Christians: Essays on American Unitarian History (Boston: Beacon, 1970) 44.Google Scholar

3 Barbara Packer has discussed Emerson's feeling that he was extending the concerns of Channing and other Unitarians in his address: see Emerson's Fall: A New Interpretation of the Major Essays (New York: Continuum, 1982) 123–25.Google Scholar

4 Channing, William Ellery, “The Demands of the Age on the Ministry” (1824)Google Scholar, in The Works of William E. Channing, D. D. (Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1875) 273.Google Scholar

5 For a discussion of the pietistic element in nineteenth-century Unitarianism, see Howe, Daniel Walker, The Unitarian Conscience: Harvard Moral Philosophy, 1805–1861 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970) 151–73.Google Scholar

6 Brazer, John, The Power of Unitarianism Over the Affections (American Unitarian Association Tracts, First Series, no. 27; Boston: Leonard C. Bowles, 1829) 3.Google Scholar

7 Ware, Henry Jr, A Sermon Delivered at the Ordination of Rev. Chandler Robbins, Over the Second Congregational Church in Boston (Boston: James W. Burditt, 1833) 15.Google Scholar

8 Miller, Perry, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (New York: Macmillan, 1939) 471–72.Google Scholar See also Sacvan Bercovitch's interpretation of the cultural significance of the Jeremiad in The American Jeremiad (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978).Google Scholar

9 Buckminster, Joseph Stevens, A Sermon, Delivered at the Interment of the Reverend William Emerson (Boston: Joseph T. Buckingham, 1811) 10.Google Scholar

10 Lawrence Buell has written definitively on this development: see Literary Transcendentalism: Form and Vision in the American Renaissance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973)Google Scholar, and New England Literary Culture: From Revolution Through Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).Google Scholar

11 See Lawrence Buell's discussion of the development of belles lettres in New England from a range of quasi-literary forms in New England Literary Culture, 23–55, 137–90.

12 Howe has discussed the nineteenth-century Unitarian belief in the centrality of emotion to the impact of literature, and the relation of the role of the preacher and author in Unitarian aesthetics: see The Unitarian Conscience, 194–97.

13 For a detailed discussion of Emerson's use of the term “soul,” see Bishop, Jonathan, Emerson on the Soul (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Cabot, James E., A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson (2 vols.; Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1888)2.689. Hereafter cited parenthetically as Cabot.Google Scholar

15 For an illuminating discussion of Ware's reaction to the Address, see Hutchison, William R., The Transcendentalist Ministers: Church Reform in the New England Renaissance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959) 76–79. Hutchison stresses the difficulty with which Ware criticized Emerson, because of the cordial friendship that existed between them, and their shared work at the Second Church.Google Scholar

16 “The Personality of the Deity,” in The Works of Henry Ware, Jr., D.D.. (4 vols.; Boston: James Munroe, 1846) 3. 27–28. Further references to this text will be cited parenthetically by page number.Google Scholar

17 nMark Twain's Notebook (ed. Paine, Albert Bigelow; New York/London: Harper and Brothers, 1935) 344Google Scholar. See also Gibson, William M., The Art of Mark Twain (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976) 165.Google Scholar