Even more clearly than the Divinity School Address, "Compensation" explains why Emerson had to renounce his ministry and cut himself loose from the organized church—at whatever cost to his understanding of the social dimension of religion. The essay begins with a biting analysis of the "ordinary manner" of depicting the Last Judgment, where the wicked are condemned and the lowly finally claim their long-deferred reward. This ostensibly comforting picture of the world to come, Emerson points out, implies a bleak picture of the world as it is. It assumes that "judgment is not executed in this world; that the wicked are successful; that the good are miserable," and that good people can hope to prosper only in the next life. Worse, it equates spiritual prosperity with the enjoyment of the very luxuries conventionally condemned as sinful. It assures the meek and lowly, in effect, that they too will have their chance to sin, when the tables are turned in heaven.

Having recently listened to a preacher expound this curious doctrine, Emerson ponders its implications.

What did the preacher mean by saying that the good are miserable in the present life? Was it that houses and lands, offices, wine, horses, dress, luxury, are had by unprincipled men, whilst the saints are poor and despised; and that a compensation is to be made to these last hereafter, by giving them the like gratifications another day—bank-stock and doubloons, venison and champagne? This must be the compensation intended ; for what else? Is it that they are to have leave to pray and praise? to love and serve men? Why, that they can do now. The legitimate inference the disciple would draw was—"We are to have such a good time as the sinners have now"; or, to push it to its extreme import—"You sin now, we shall sin by and by; we would sin now, if we could; not being successful we expect our revenge tomorrow."

The "fallacy" in such preaching, Emerson says, lies in the "immense concession that the bad are successful; that justice is not done now." Divine justice, as conventionally conceived, rests on a false idea of justice and a false idea of success. It defers to the "base estimate of the market of what constitutes a manly success." But the conventional preaching Emer

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