It makes the sky and the hills sublime, and the silent song of the stars is it. It is the beatitude ofman. It makes him illimitable. When he says 'I ought'; when love warns him; when he chooses,warned from on high, the good and great deed; then, deep melodies wander through his soul fromsupreme wisdom. Then he can worship, and be enlarged by his worship; for he can never gobehind this sentiment. All the expressions of this sentiment are sacred and permanent in proportionto their purity. [They] affect us more than all other compositions. The sentences of the olden time,which ejaculate this piety, are still fresh and fragrant. And the unique impression of Jesus uponmankind, whose name is not so much written as ploughed into the history of this world, is proof ofthe subtle virtue of this infusion."[10]

[10] Miscellanies, 1868, p. 120 (abridged).

Such is the Emersonian religion. The universe has a divine soul of order, which soul is moral,being also the soul within the soul of man. But whether this soul of the universe be a mere qualitylike the eye's brilliancy or the skin's softness, or whether it be a self-conscious life like the eye'sseeing or the skin's feeling, is a decision that never unmistakably appears in Emerson's pages. Itquivers on the boundary of these things, sometimes leaning one way sometimes the other, to suitthe literary rather than the philosophic need. Whatever it is, though, it is active. As much as if itwere a God,l interests and keep the world's balance straight. Thesentences in which Emerson, to the very end, gave utterance to this faith are as fine as anything inliterature: "If you love and serve men, you cannot by any hiding or stratagem escape theremuneration. Secret retributions are always restoring the level, when disturbed, of the divinejustice. It is impossible to tilt the beam. All the tyrants and proprietors and monopolists of theworld in vain set their shoulders to heave the bar. Settles forevermore the ponderous equator to itsline, and man and mote, and star and sun, must range to it, or be pulverized by the recoil."[11]

[11] Lectures and Biographical Sketches, 1868, p. 186 with her, he would sanction everything at oncehe answered..