Secondly, Emerson examines the failure of traditional Christianity to acknowledge as its source "Moral Nature, that Law of laws, whose revelations introduce greatness, — yea, God himself, into the open soul." Consequently, men think that revelation happened long ago, once and for all, "as if God were dead," instead of being always possible for every individual. This belief makes it difficult for the minister to preach with meaning and to offer inspiration. Because he is obliged to preach a religion that has been formalized and codified, he cannot preach the primacy of the soul. Because "the seer is a sayer," the minister's words do not satisfy his own inner (although sometimes unrecognized) need to impart vision of the "beauty of the soul" to others; nor do they satisfy the innate craving of the members of his congregation to realize their own personal connection to God.
Emerson deplores the death of faith and the lifelessness of the church, and he urges his audience of new preachers embarking upon pastoral careers to restore truth, the soul, and intuitive revelation to the church. The barrenness of inherited religion must be acknowledged, and ministers must accept their true and exalted function. The preacher's particular office is to express the applicability of the moral sentiment to the duties of life, to help his parishioners relate the ideal to experience. Emerson laments how infrequently the preacher helps man to see "that he is an infinite Soul; that the earth and heavens are passing into his mind; that he is drinking forever the soul of God," and points out that we ourselves, sitting in church on Sunday, come to a better understanding of God than the preacher offers. Religious formalism leaves us empty. The preacher who does not convey his own humanity and the truth that he has gleaned from life says nothing that we need to hear.
But people so want to enlarge their sense of the moral sentiment that they still go to church. The "good hearer" takes what he can from bad sermons by finding in them echoes of more inspiring words he has heard and thoughts he has had at other times. People put up with preaching that does not acknowledge the soul, because the stale doctrines preached were all once intuitively inspired and preserve some of the vigor imparted by their origins. The minister is on some level aware of the lack of truth and life in what he preaches, and he suspects that he falls short of fulfilling his duty. He cannot even invite men to the Lord's Supper in good conscience, because he is unable to bring warmth to this rite, the "hollow, dry, creaking formality" of which is "too plain."
