Truth received on authority, or acquired without labor, makes but a feeble impression. The following year Boston's Federal Street Church called and ordained him. Tappan preached the ordination sermon, his uncle Henry Channing gave the charge, and his Harvard classmate and friend Joseph Tuckerman extended the right hand of fellowship.
Channing served on the board of the Harvard Corporation, , and worked toward the establishment of the Harvard Divinity School. In Channing married a first cousin, Ruth Gibbs, one of the wealthiest women in the country. He upheld a woman's right to own property and never claimed his wife's money, as the law of the time allowed him to do.
They had four children. His son, William Francis Channing, designed Boston's citywide fire alarm system, the nation's first. For some time dissension had been brewing among New England Congregationalists.
Always reluctant to be divisive, Channing did not speak publicly about the controversy until The Rev. Jedediah Morse, looking to call attention to liberal tendencies in Congregationalism, had reprinted a chapter on American Unitarianism from the British Unitarian Thomas Belsham's Life of Theophilus Lindsey. A review of Morse's reprint in an orthodox magazine, The Panoplist , charged New England's liberal ministers with secretly sharing Lindsey's Socinian views, although they hid them from church members.
Channing wrote a reply, addressed to a liberal colleague and titled, A Letter to the Rev. Samuel C. He denied that liberal ministers were Socinian, but went on to describe the subtleties of Trinitarian doctrine as of little use in the minister's work of inspiring people to lives of Christian love. Channing's Letter immediately and publicly identified him as a spokesperson for liberal congregations and their ministry.
A few years after Channing's Letter it was clear that Unitarians would be a separate communion. In , to make clear the liberals' theology in a time of conflicting reports, Channing delivered a landmark sermon, Unitarian Christianity , at the ordination by the new First Independent Church in Baltimore of Jared Sparks.
Tens of thousands of copies were sold. In Unitarian Christianity Channing described the Bible as "a book written for men, in the language of men" whose "meaning is to be sought in the same manner as that of other books. He said that nowhere does the New Testament's word for God mean three persons; that so confusing a doctrine as the Trinity distracts the mind from communion with God; and that in effect the doctrine of predestination "makes of men machines. There, criticizing the Trinitarian doctrine of vicarious atonement, he said, "It does not make the promotion of piety [Christ's] chief end.
It teaches, that the highest purpose of his mission was to reconcile God to man, not man to God. He confidently preached the possibility of unending moral and spiritual progress for all who would shape their lives in accordance with its demands. He said in his Election Day sermon, "Spiritual Freedom," "I call that mind free which masters the senses, which protects itself against animal appetites, which contemns pleasure and pain in comparison with its own energy, which penetrates beneath the body and recognizes its own reality and greatness.
I call that mind free which escapes the bondage of matter, which, instead of stopping at the material universe and making it a prison wall, passes beyond it to its Author. But Channing went on to pronounce a spiritual and intellectual manifesto which voiced the germ of Emerson's Divinity School Address and, indeed, the Transcendental movement.
He wrote in "Likeness to God," , "Our own moral nature" leads us to comprehend God through its "approving and condemning voice. The soul, by its sense of right, or its perception of moral distinctions, is clothed with sovereignty over itself, and through this alone, it understands and recognizes the Sovereign of the Universe. The warp and woof of this fabric are not without tension. For Channing, the tensions were existential.
The power of Channing's eloquence was greatly enhanced by his presence, in the pulpit and elsewhere. It was as though people could feel directly his benign sincerity. Frederic Henry Hedge said Channing could "send his word into the soul with more searching force than all the orators of his time.
One of the earliest innovations of his ministry was to invite the children about him after worship. This was one of a number of examples of his creating small discussion groups for church members which emerged as part of the Sunday School movement. In he worked with Samuel Cooper Thacher of the New South Church to produce a catechism for the use of the children in the two churches. His first published sermon was "The Duties of Children," He wrote in his "Remarks on Education," "There is no office higher than that of a teacher of youth, for there is nothing on earth so precious as the mind, soul, character of the child.
He vigorously defended the right to criticize the war, saying a republican government secures its citizens' right to vote and to discuss their rulers. Those attending formed the Peace Society of Massachusetts, the first of numerous "societies" founded in Channing's study. For nearly twenty years Channing was the Federal Street Church's active parish minister. In he took a young associate, Ezra Stiles Gannett. From the first Channing extended trust and pulpit freedom to his associate.
In Channing had traveled to England and continental Europe for the sake of his frail health. The trip did little by way of improving his health, but it stimulated his literary interests. Returned from Europe, he penned several essays, all highly acclaimed, on Milton, ; Fenelon, ; and Napoleon Bonaparte, These, the first American essays written in the grand tradition of judicial criticism, caught the attention of British reviewers and established Channing's literary work as worthy to be discussed along with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thomas Carlyle.
Channing was ambivalent about money. He owed his financial independence and some of his social standing to his wife's fortune, yet was frequently driven by his faith and conscience to make social and political stands that offended both the Gibbs and the Channings. In he wrote to Lucy Aiken of the house he was building next to the Gibbs mansion. He said he spent nothing on amusements and little on clothing, but that he must have a good house, "open to the sun and air, with apartments large enough for breathing freely.
Although his family exploited the free labor market, Channing was deeply concerned about the destiny of displaced and low wage workers. In he proposed to the Wednesday Evening Association, a charitable society he had helped found, a ministry to the poor of Boston's docks. Joseph Tuckerman took up the call. In the Benevolent Fraternity of Churches in Boston was formed to support Tuckerman's and others' ministries. Channing conceived spiritual awakening to be required for economic development in the circumstances of a free labor market.
His lecture, Self-Culture , , was addressed to working artisans. He tried to inspire them with his vision of their potential. He told them politics, education, art and literature could all be means of their development and prosperity. Self-culture is the practice of likeness to God.
Any notion that the majority of human beings, all with a moral nature, were created only to "minister to the luxury and elevation of the few," violates the universality of human rights. Among those critical of Channing's concept of self-culture was Orestes Brownson, who had converted to Unitarianism upon reading Channing's "Likeness to God. He wrote in The Laboring Classes , , "Self-culture is a good thing, but it cannot abolish inequality, nor restore men to their rights.
As a means it is well, as an end it is nothing. He feared large organizations and was unwilling in to take any part in forming of the American Unitarian Association, a missionary organization which would seek support from the liberal churches. He said there is "no moral worth in being swept away by a crowd, even towards the best objects. In his "Remarks on Associations," , Channing described the church, the family and the state as natural institutions; others worked unneeded mischief.
He formulated the Iron Law of Oligarchy: the "tendency of great institutions to accumulate power in a few hands. But Channing attended few meetings because he felt those in attendance might defer to him rather than speak their own minds. He did nevertheless participate in another discussion group which included Alcott, Hedge, and Ripley.
In its place they embraced an "absolute" religion whose moral demands they intuitively perceived to "transcend" all history. These younger ministers and other "Transcendentalists" called for the radical restructuring of society, and also publicly subjected Unitarians any less passionately committed to social reform than themselves to withering criticism. Ever one to avoid conflict if possible, Channing did not publicly criticize the Transcendentalists.
In fact he had "far more sympathy with them," according to James Freeman Clarke 's account of an conversation, than with self-satisfied and apathetic "technical Unitarians. Emerson, though not uncritical of Channing's caution, told Peabody, "In our wantonness we often flout Dr. He was born on April 8, , in Newport, R. He graduated from Harvard College in He spent some time as a tutor, and in he returned to Harvard to study for the ministry.
Because he showed great promise, Harvard appointed him regent, a less lofty post than the title suggested. He acted as a proctor to the students, but the job left him time for books and helped him support himself. The next year he was ordained as minister of the Federal Street Church in Boston, where he remained until his death.
He married his cousin Ruth Gibbs in In a sense, leadership and eminence came to Channing not through aggressively seeking it but because he was born at the right time. Theology was in crisis during Channing's prime. Almost from the beginning there were two warring parties in New England. The Calvinists believed in a jealous God, the depravity of mankind, and the absence of free will.
The anti-Calvinists believed in a merciful God, the potential redemption of all mankind, and the existence of free will. As the 19th century proceeded, the fight between the parties sharpened. Channing, after much deliberation, sided with the anti-Calvinists. In Baltimore in Channing preached a sermon entitled "Unitarian Christianity.
Other influential sermons followed. In Channing organized a conference of Unitarian ministers, which 5 years later fathered the American Unitarian Association. He helped found the Unitarian journal, Christian Register, and became one of its outstanding contributors.
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