J. 1560, 1631 H.W.F. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, LL.D., Boston, Massachusetts, May 25, 1803—April 27, 1882, Concord, Massachusetts. He was the son of Rev. William Emerson, _q.v._, minister of the First Church of Boston (Unitarian) who, though not himself a hymn writer, published in 1808 the excellent small collection entitled _A Collection of Psalms and Hymns_ (5). R. W. Emerson graduated from Harvard College in 1821 and after further study in the Harvard Divinity School took his A.M. in 1827. He was ordained in 1829 as minister of the Second Church of Boston (Unitarian). He served the church for three years but resigned in 1832, feeling that his pastoral work was inadequate and that he was not in accord with his parishioners’ views about the Communion Service. A volume of his sermons, selected and edited by A. C. McGiffert, Jr., was published in 1938 under the title _The Young Emerson Speaks_. Although he preached occasionally for several years thereafter he never held another pastorate, but retired to Concord and devoted himself to lecturing and authorship. As an essayist and poet he rose to great and lasting distinction. He published _Orations, Lectures, and Addresses_, 1844; _Poems_, 1846; _Representative Men_, 1850; _English Traits_, 1856; and a succession of later volumes. His _Collected Works_ were published after his death, in 12 volumes. Perhaps his most famous essay was his epoch-making _Divinity School Address_, delivered in 1838. In 1833 he wrote his hymn _We love the venerable house_ (The house of God) for the ordination of his successor, Rev. Chandler Robbins, _q.v._, in the Second Church, though it is more a commemorative poem than an ordination hymn. It was included in Longfellow and Johnson’s _Hymns of the Spirit_, 1864; in Martineau’s _Hymns of Praise and Prayer_, printed in England in 1873; and in later Unitarian and other hymn books down to the present day. Four stanzas selected from this poem, beginning with the second, _Here holy thoughts a light have shed_, were included in Hedge and Huntington’s _Hymns for the Church of Christ_, 1853, though without the author’s name, and the same collection erroneously attributed to Emerson a hymn beginning, _All before us is the way_, the author of which was Eliza T. Clapp, _q.v._, an error which was repeated in various other collections. Part of Emerson’s poem entitled _The Problem_, beginning _Out of the heart of nature rolled_ (The Everlasting Word) originally printed in the _Dial_, July, 1840, and then in his _Poems_, 1846, was also included in _Hymns of the Spirit_, 1864, and in Martineau’s _Hymns_, but has since dropped out of use. Another poem of two stanzas beginning _Not gold, but only men can make_