"Emerson,_Ralph_Waldo_-_An_Address" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emerson Ralph Waldo)

Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He saw
with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by its severe harmony,
ravished with its beauty, he lived in it, and had his being there.
Alone in all history, he estimated the greatness of man. One man was
true to what is in you and me. He saw that God incarnates himself in
man, and evermore goes forth anew to take possession of his world.
He said, in this jubilee of sublime emotion, `I am divine. Through
me, God acts; through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me; or, see
thee, when thou also thinkest as I now think.' But what a distortion
did his doctrine and memory suffer in the same, in the next, and the
following ages! There is no doctrine of the Reason which will bear
to be taught by the Understanding. The understanding caught this
high chant from the poet's lips, and said, in the next age, `This was
Jehovah come down out of heaven. I will kill you, if you say he was
a man.' The idioms of his language, and the figures of his rhetoric,
have usurped the place of his truth; and churches are not built on
his principles, but on his tropes. Christianity became a Mythus, as
the poetic teaching of Greece and of Egypt, before. He spoke of
miracles; for he felt that man's life was a miracle, and all that man
doth, and he knew that this daily miracle shines, as the character
ascends. But the word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches,
gives a false impression; it is Monster. It is not one with the
blowing clover and the falling rain.

He felt respect for Moses and the prophets; but no unfit
tenderness at postponing their initial revelations, to the hour and
the man that now is; to the eternal revelation in the heart. Thus
was he a true man. Having seen that the law in us is commanding, he
would not suffer it to be commanded. Boldly, with hand, and heart,
and life, he declared it was God. Thus is he, as I think, the only
soul in history who has appreciated the worth of a man.

1. In this point of view we become very sensible of the first
defect of historical Christianity. Historical Christianity has
fallen into the error that corrupts all attempts to communicate
religion. As it appears to us, and as it has appeared for ages, it
is not the doctrine of the soul, but an exaggeration of the personal,
the positive, the ritual. It has dwelt, it dwells, with noxious
exaggeration about the _person_ of Jesus. The soul knows no persons.
It invites every man to expand to the full circle of the universe,
and will have no preferences but those of spontaneous love. But by
this eastern monarchy of a Christianity, which indolence and fear
have built, the friend of man is made the injurer of man. The manner
in which his name is surrounded with expressions, which were once
sallies of admiration and love, but are now petrified into official
titles, kills all generous sympathy and liking. All who hear me,
feel, that the language that describes Christ to Europe and America,
is not the style of friendship and enthusiasm to a good and noble
heart, but is appropriated and formal, -- paints a demigod, as the