Tuesday, January 25, 2011

* Context

I am forgotten like a dead man out of mind: I am like a broken vessel.

Psalms
31:12
KJV, 1611





My friends, in these two errors I think I find the causes of a decaying church and a wasting unbelief.  And what greater calamity can fall upon a nation than the loss of worship?  Then all things go to decay.  Genius leaves the temple, to haunt the senate or the market.  Literature become frivolous.  Science is cold.  The eye of youth is not lighted by the hope of other worlds, and age is without honor.  Society lives to trifles, and when men die, we do not mention them.



Ralph Waldo Emerson
An Address Delivered Before the Senior Class in Divinity College
Sunday evening
July 15, 1838

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