Here are few quotes & my comments/questions:

 pg. 724 “But the highest minds of the world have never ceased to explore the double meaning, or shall I say the quadruple…of every sensuous fact”

pg. 725 “The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression.”
pg. 278 “Since everything in nature answers to a moral power, if any phenomenon remains brute and dark it is because the corresponding faculty in the observer is not yet active.”

pg. 735 “The religions of the world are the ejaculations of a few imaginative men.”

To Emerson, poets and writers are those that are ordained to illustrated the world to everyone else, to give name and label to all things material and immaterial that otherwise would be unknown and uncomprehended.  He believes that all people have the desire to express what is within, but not necessarily through art or writing, and those compelled to the arts are the artists and poets. For some reasons these certain people want to be the namers and labelers, want to find the quadruple meanings in words and connotations.  I would argue against Emerson that the existence of things doesn’t rest quite so heavily on human understanding of it, yet maybe the opposite, that our existence depends on the discovery of our surroundings that have been there all along.

As far as his take on religion, Emerson could be right, and he could be wrong. I think many religious thinkers would argue that something well beyond their imaginations inspire them and couldn’t begin to take full credit for the religions they follow.