Page:Fourteen sonnets and poems.djvu/62

 spirit of simple righteousness. An old note-book yields the following naive stroke: "Orthodoxy is too worldly and too narrow," and to those who confounded dogma with Christianity he was an offence, and not altogether understood; but on the same page we find him saying: "Christianity is greater and more universal than any of us have as yet been able to see or realize. God builds his temple in the human heart on the ruin, if need be, of the churches and every other institution of man."

"If I were asked the veritable purpose of this life, I should answer, To develop within ourselves a consciousness of immortality.

"As the American republic was to exemplify in itself the last analysis of politics as a science of government, so it was also to make known and emphasize the last analysis of religion. Transcendentalism is that analysis. It is the world merged in spirit; matter subordinated to mind.

"We should never forget that we belong to the Infinite. The only right use of this world is to use it as a means, never as an end. This world is simply the soul's rescue from nonentity.

"Moved by our higher impulses, we are always in a state of elevation. I have as much right to ecstasy as to rheumatism. Why not assert it?"

He adds a new beatitude in recognition of the unsung service of teaching when he writes to a friend