Emerson quote

Here's an insight by Ralph Waldo Emerson on practices and ritual that seem relevant for religious liberals today. It's from his address to the Harvard Divinity students.

The evils of the church that now is are manifest. The question returns, What shall we do? I confess, all attempts to project and establish a cultus with new rites and forms, seem to me vain.

Faith makes us and not we it, and faith makes its own forms. All attempts to contrive a system are as cold as the new worship introduced by the French to the goddess of reason.

Rather let the breath of new life be breathed by you through the forms already existing. For if once you are alive, you shall find they shall become plastic and new.