The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson - by R.W. Emerson Institute, Jim Manley, Director - RWE.org

Illuminating Emerson’s spiritual development

July 2, 2003

BOOK REVIEW
Illuminating Emerson’s spiritual development

The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Writings

by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edited by David M. Robinson

Beacon, 288 pp., $25

By Richard Higgins
Globe Correspondent

Even now, as we mark the 200th anniversary of his birth, people still believe that Ralph Waldo Emerson left the ministry in 1832. He resigned the pastorate of the Second Church of Boston, yes, but as Elizabeth Palmer Peabody and others have noted, he took the pulpit with him and carted it around for 40 years. Emerson could no more have stopped being a minister than he could have stopped being Emerson.

The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson