“Let me
admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those
which are sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without
mediator or veil. 

“[Make] yourself a
newborn bard of the Holy Ghost, — cast behind you all conformity, and acquaint
men at first hand with Deity.”

These rousing words, trembling with passion, were spoken by Ralph Waldo Emerson to the senior class at Harvard Divinity School on July 15, 1838. Emerson had been invited by the students, not the faculty. Many of the Harvard divines were shaken to their bowels by Emerson’s attack on the kind of organized religion that seeks to suppress direct experience of the sacred. After his address, Emerson was blocked from returning to
Harvard for nearly thirty years.

As we approach the holidays, let’s carry the thought from Emerson that the best way to celebrate and revive the sacred in our lives is “to love God without mediator or veil”, including through our dreams.  

Emerson reminds us that the knowledge of essential things is to be found in the soul, not in the churches or academies. “The man on whom the soul descends, through whom the soul speaks, alone can teach.”

Harvard Divinity Hall, where Emerson delivered his address