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
William Ellery Channing quotes about
Soul Gathers Force It is possible, when the future is dim, when our depressed faculties can form no bright ideas of the perfection and happiness of a better world,-it is possible still to cling to the conviction of God's merciful purpose towards His creatures, of His parental goodness even in suffering, still to feel that the path of duty, though trodden with a heavy heart, leads to peace.
True love is the parent of humility....
Mistakes and errors are the discipline through which we advance.
The mind, in proportion as it is cut off from free communication with nature, with revelation, with God, with itself, loses its life, just as the body droops when debarred from the air and the cheering light from heaven.
To extinguish the free will is to strike the conscience with death, for both have but one and the same life.
Natural amiableness is too often seen in company with sloth, with uselessness, with the vanity of fashionable life.
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.
Conscience, the sense of right, the power of perceiving moral distinctions, the power of discerning between justice and injustice, excellence and baseness, is the highest faculty given us by God, the whole foundation of our responsibility, and our sole capacity for religion. ...God, in giving us conscience, has implanted a principle within us which forbids us to prostrate ourselves before mere power, or to offer praise where we do not discover worth.
One of the tremendous evils of the world, is the monstrous accumulation of power in a few hands.
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.
The fewer the voices on the side of truth, the more distinct and strong must be your own.
Life is a fragment, a moment between two eternities.
Be true to your own highest convictions.
Other blessings may be taken away, but if we have acquired a good friend by goodness, we have a blessing which improves in value when others fail.