Some scholars believe that the "transparent eyeball" passage is an echo of the Bible. 'In Nature, Emerson fashions himself as a new prophet of nature, believing with Goethe that "prophetic vision" arises only in "slowpaced experiment." Vision arises from observing nature, where, as he writes in Nature, "All things are moral; and in their boundless changes have an unceasing reference to spiritual nature." The essay can be regarded as Emerson's attempt to make nature itself a bible. In this sense, one need not spend Sundays at church but could simply retreat to the 'woods' and let nature inhabit his or her consciousness. "The reconstruction of religion in Emerson's nature works in a number of directions. First, there is an undeniable romantic-naturalism in his writings. One can and should go out into nature, into the fields and forests and be renewed. It follows, then, that Emerson's religiosity may be read as natural and not supernatural, which may account for his centrality in a tradition of arts and letters which dates to his decisive split with organized religion." The significance of this shift resulted in Emerson's paradigmatic role for transcendentalism. "Transcendentalists believe that finding God depended on neither orthodox (Christianity) nor the Unitarians' sensible exercise of virtue, but on one's inner striving toward spiritual communion with the divine spirit."
