William Ellery Channing
William Ellery Channing
William Ellery Channingwas the foremost Unitarian preacher in the United States in the early nineteenth century and along with Andrews Norton,, one of Unitarianism's leading theologians. He was known for his articulate and impassioned sermons and public speeches, and as a prominent thinker in the liberal theology of the day. Channing's religion and thought were among the chief influences on the New England Transcendentalists, though he never countenanced their views, which he saw as extreme. The beliefs he espoused, especially...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth7 April 1780
CountryUnited States of America
Progress, the growth of power, is the end and boon of liberty; and, without this, a people may have the name, but want the substance and spirit of freedom.
Knowledge is essential to freedom.
No punishment is so terrible as prosperous guilt.
No man receives the full culture of a man in whom the sensibility to the beautiful is not cherished; and there is no condition of life from which it should be excluded. Of all luxuries this is the cheapest, and the most at hand, and most important to those conditions where coarse labor tends to give grossness to the mind.
Natural amiableness is too often seen in company with sloth, with uselessness, with the vanity of fashionable life.
War will never yield but to the principles of universal justice and love, and these have no sure root but in the religion of Jesus Christ.
There is but a very minute portion of the creation which we can turn into food and clothes, or gratification for the body; but the whole creation may be used to minister to the sense of beauty.
Religion is faith in an infinite Creator, who delights in and enjoins that rectitude which conscience commands us to seek. This conviction gives a Divine sanction to duty.
War is to be ranked among the most dreadful calamities which fall on a guilty world; and, what deserves consideration, it tends to multiply and perpetuate itself without end. It feeds and grows on the blood which it sheds. The passions, from which it springs, gain strength and fury from indulgence.
God deliver us all from prejudice and unkindness, and fill us with the love of truth and virtue.
What a sublime doctrine it is, that goodness cherished now is eternal life already entered on!
We honor revelation too highly to make it the antagonist of reason, or to believe that it calls us to renounce our highest powers.
Compassionate Saviour! We welcome Thee to our world, We welcome Thee to our hearts. We bless Thee for the Divine goodness Thou hast brought from heaven; for the souls Thou hast warmed with love to man, and lifted up in love to God; for the efforts of divine philanthropy which Thou hast inspired; and for that hope of a pure celestial life, through which Thy disciples triumph over death.
Another powerful principle of our nature, which is the spring of war, is the passion for superiority, for triumph, for power. The human mind is aspiring, impatient of inferiority, and eager for preeminence and control.