Thursday, December 06, 2012
Emerson on the Bible
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals (1865)
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It should be easy to say what I have always felt, that Stanley's Lives of the Philosophers, or Marcus Antoninus, are agreeable and suggestive books to me, whilst St. Paul or St. John are not, and I should never think of taking up these to start me on my task, as I often have used Plato or Plutarch. It is because the Bible wears black cloth. It comes with a certain official claim against which the mind revolts. The book has its own nobilities—might well be charming, if it was left simply on its merits, as the others; but this "you must,"—"it is your duty," repels.Id. (July 21, 1836):
Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your reading have been to you like the blast of triumph out of Shakspear, Seneca, Moses, John and Paul.
