Richard G. Geldard, who wrote a superb book titled The Esoteric Emerson, keeps the juices flowing with this excellent tome on the Concord seer's "task of presenting an exalted vision of human nature." The author regards Emerson's controversial divinity school address as an attempt to break out of carefully circumscribed Christian doctrines about God and Jesus Christ.
Geldard uses Emerson's journals, which he called a "savings bank," to explore his affirmation of intuition, conscience, and imagination as tools of spiritual unfolding. He also explores Emerson's ideas about the life of the mind, the attributes of God, and the nature of "the Abyss."
What is Emerson's legacy for the new millennium? Geldard writes: "His vision celebrates the ability and right of each individual human being to reach freely into the infinite resources of nature for life-enhancing knowledge and power. His vision does not tend toward the withering away of established religion or propose some Ayn Randian exaltation of the personal ego. Emerson always affirmed that Self-Reliance is God-Reliance." That's why this profound Concord seeker is so relevant to the spiritual quests of modern day pilgrims.