The Function of the Preacher
Emerson aims in "The Divinity School Address" to inspire his audience of new preachers to meet the currently unsatisfied spiritual needs of their future congregations. The codification of religion into fixed forms and beliefs has made their fulfillment of this responsibility difficult. Emerson declares, ". . . the Moral Nature, that Law of laws whose revelations introduce greatness, — yea, God himself, into the open soul, is not explored as the fountain of the established teaching in society." Men and their religious leaders no longer understand that revelation is always possible and also essential to their spirituality. They regard it as an isolated phenomenon that occurred in the past. It is the preacher's function to restore soul to his parishioners by encouraging intuitive spirituality and promoting an immediate relationship with God. Emerson emphasizes that only the minister who has experienced intuitive perception of God can preach it:
The spirit only can teach. Not any profane man, not any sensual, not any liar, not any slave can teach, but only he can give, who has; he only can create, who is. The man on whom the soul descends, through whom the soul speaks, alone can teach.
Emerson laments the fact that the minister is frequently not such a man. In its failure to address all-encompassing soul as the first, central, necessary element of religion, the church has made worship joyless. If the minister likewise does not address the importance of spirit as the direct link between man and God, he not only neglects his true obligations, but is inwardly aware of his failure, and his congregation is profoundly dissatisfied. "Whenever the pulpit is usurped by a formalist," Emerson proclaims, "then is the worshipper defrauded and disconsolate." Conversely, when the minister is himself "a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost," he is able to reject conformity and to "acquaint men at first hand with Deity."
If a good preacher possesses divinely inspired spirit and values it above form, he must also have the ability to convey his own humanity to his flock. Emerson provides the specific example of a preacher so uninspired and uninspiring that he almost made his hearers (Emerson among them) wish to avoid church. (Emerson no doubt here indirectly refers to the Reverend Barzillai Frost, assistant minister and later minister of the First Parish in Concord.) In contrast with the raging snowstorm outside the church, this preacher lacked reality. He did not communicate that he, too, like the members of his congregation, was a man, that he had lived and experienced what they had lived and experienced. His sermon gave not a hint that "he had ever lived at all. Not a line did he draw out of real history." Emerson uses this example to underscore the key function of the preacher — bringing his parishioners to the realization of spirit. He asserts, "The true preacher can be known by this, that he deals out to the people his life, — life passed through the fire of thought." In so doing, the preacher offers his parishioners living proof that individual spirituality can coexist with and even thrive amidst the realities of experience. The minister's spirit and humanity together will infuse the dry rites of the church with relevance and meaning.
