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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: he can worship, and be enlarged by his worship; for he can never
go behind this sentiment. All the expressions of this sentiment
are sacred and permanent in proportion to 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 upon mankind, whose
name is not so much written as ploughed into the history of this
world, is proof of the 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
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