Throughout “Nature”, Emerson’s ministry background is evident, but it is especially clear in the “Introduction”.  Like a minister, enlivened by his faith, he asks countless rhetorical questions of the reader, like a preacher to his congregation. “Why should we not have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not a history of theirs?” This is his initial call for spirituality based on the direct observation of nature, instead of through texts or prophets. Again, playing the good minister, he clarifies his terminology, stating that “Nature” is that which is external to ourselves, “essences unchanged by man; space, the air, the river, the leaf.”
A reoccurring pattern throughout the text is the notion that spirituality and connecting to the divine is achieved by a communion with the sublime. In essence, forgive the rhyme, the sublime is linked to the divine.  In “Chapter 1. Nature”, Emerson jumps immediately into the sublime.

“…if a man would be alone let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give a man, in the heavenly bodies, the perceptual presence of the sublime.”

Part of what makes “Nature” so divinely sublime, for Emerson, are her unknowable secrets. “Neither does the wisest man exhort her secret, and lose curiosity by finding out all her perfection.” Key to his understanding  of  the sublime is the idea that nature cannot be owned, or possessed, only linked by those with open eyes. “There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet.” Also present in Chapter 1, is the image of Nature as a return to childhood, an escape from the sorrows of adult life. “In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows.” “ In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child.” This return to childhood or a return to innocence, can be interpreted as a means of connecting with the divine. Children by nature, in their naivety and innocence, are often associated with being more closely connected to the divine, and in this case, the sublime.

The woods, or nature, are described as a kind of vehicle to the divine. In them, one can return to grace and connect with the “ perfection of creation” and God. “Within these plantations of God, a decorum of sanctity reign…In the woods, we return to reason and faith…no disgrace, no calamity, which nature cannot repair…all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.” In Chapter 7, “ Spirit”,  Emerson continues in a similar vain, suggesting “..the noblest ministry of nature is to stand as the apparition to God. It is the the organ through which the universal spirit speaks to the individual…”

When Emerson’s notions of intuitive, personal revelation were poorly received both in his Harvard address and in “Nature’s” earliest publication, his friend and contemporary Transcendentalist, Amos Bronson Alcott said that “Emerson’s church consists of one member — himself.” But centuries later, his work continues to inspire a following, a kind of disenfranchised congregation of people like myself, who find happiness and divinity in nature, specifically the sublime. I can only speak for myself, but I cannot fathom a temple more perfect, a church more inspiring of worship, than nature. “The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship.”