the human need to believe...................

      The final lecture in Pittsburgh, presented April 1, was "Worship."  The title is misleading, since the piece is not at all about rites, rituals, or other aspects of formal worship.  It is a lecture on the religious impulse in human nature, on the human need to believe.  This is Emerson's last major essay on the religious spirit.  "Worship" contains almost no consideration of church religion.  Emerson stoutly asserts that "God builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of churches and religions."  We do not need formal religions because "We are born believing.  A man bears beliefs as tree bears apples."

-Robert D. Richardson,  Emerson:  The Mind on Fire

Emerson quotes excerpted from here