Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 1).djvu/611

Rh of which those longest-lived and of widest repute were the &ldquo;North American Review&rdquo; and the &ldquo;Christian Examiner.&rdquo; Essays published in these journals, especially those on Milton and on the character of Napoleon, gave him literary reputation in Europe as well as at home. The intellectual movement in question was marked by an increasing interest in questions of theological and textual criticism, and by a leaning toward, if not identification with, the class of opinions that began about 1815 to be currently known as Unitarian. Though Mr. Channing was disinclined to sectarian names or methods, though he never desired to be personally called a Unitarian, and would have chosen that the movement of liberal theology should go on within the lines of the New England Congregational body, to which he belonged from birth, yet he became known as the leader of the Unitarians, and may almost be said to have first given to the body so called the consciousness of its real position and the courage of its convictions by his sermon delivered in Baltimore, 5 May, 1819, at the ordination of Jared Sparks. This celebrated discourse may be regarded less as a theological argument, for which its method is too loose and rhetorical, than as a solemn impeachment of the Calvinistic theology of that day at the bar of popular reason and conscience. And a similar judgment may be passed, in general, upon the series of controversial discourses that he delivered in the succeeding years. For about fifteen years, making the middle period of his professional life — a life interrupted only by a few months' stay in Europe (1822-'3) and a winter spent in Santa Cruz (1830- '31) — Mr. Channing was best known to the public as a leader in the Unitarian body, and the record of this time survives in several volumes of eloquent and noble sermons, which constitute still the best body of practical divinity that the Unitarian movement in this country has produced. Very interesting testimony to the habit and working of his mind at this period is also to be found in the volume of &ldquo;Reminiscences&rdquo; by Miss E. P. Peabody (Boston, 1880). A sermon on the &ldquo;Ministry at Large&rdquo; in Boston (1835) strongly illustrates the sympathetic as well as religious temper in which he now undertook those discussions of social topics — philanthropy, moral reform, and political ethics — by which his later years were most widely and honorably distinguished. From organized charity the way was open to questions of temperance and public education, which now began to take new shapes; and from these, again, to those that lie upon the borderground of morals and politics — war and slavery. Regarding the last, indeed, which may be taken as a type of the whole, it does not appear that he ever adopted the extreme opinions, or approved the characteristic modes of action, of the party known as abolitionists. But his general and very intense

sympathy with their aims was of great moral value in the anti-slavery movement, now taking more and more a political direction. Of this the earliest testimony was a brief but vigorous essay on slavery (1835), dealing with it purely on grounds of moral argument; followed the next year by a public letter of sympathy to James G. Birney (&ldquo;The Abolitionists&rdquo;), who had just been driven from Cincinnati with the destruction of his press and journal; and again, in 1837, by a letter to Henry Clay on the annexation of Texas, a policy which the writer thought good ground to justify disunion. The event that, more than any other, publicly associated his name and influence with the anti-slavery party was a meeting held in Faneuil Hall, 8 Dec., 1837, after the death of Elijah P. Lovejoy, who was shot while defending his press at Alton, Ill., when for the first time Mr. Channing stood side by side, upon the public platform, with men in whom he now saw the champions of that freedom of discussion which must be upheld by all good citizens. His later writings on the subject are a letter on &ldquo;The Slavery Question&rdquo; (1839) addressed to Jonathan Phillips; a tract on &ldquo;Emancipation&rdquo; (1840), suggested by a work of J. J. Gurney's on emancipation in the British West Indies; and an argument (1842) on &ldquo;The Duty of the Free States,&rdquo; touching the case of the slaves on board the brig &ldquo;Creole,&rdquo; of Richmond, who had seized the vessel and carried her into the port of Nassau. His last public act was an address delivered in Lenox, Mass., 1 Aug., 1842, commemorating the West India emancipation. A few weeks later, while on a journey, he was seized with an attack of autumn fever, of which he died. Interesting personal recollections remain, now passing into tradition, of Channing's rare quality and power as a pulpit orator, of which a single trait may here be given: &ldquo;From the high, old-fashioned pulpit his face beamed down, it may be said, like the face of an angel, and his voice floated down like a voice from higher spheres. It was a voice of rare power and attraction, clear, flowing, melodious, slightly plaintive, so as curiously to catch and win upon the hearer's sympathy. Its melody and pathos in the reading of a hymn was alone a charm that might bring men to the listening, like the attraction of sweet music. Often, too, when signs of physical frailty were apparent, it might be said that his speech was watched and waited for with that sort of hush as if one was waiting to catch his last earthly words.&rdquo; Numerous writings of Dr. Channing were published singly, which were gathered shortly before his death (5 vols., Boston, 1841), to which a sixth volume was added subsequently, and also, in 1872, a volume of selected sermons entitled &ldquo;The Perfect Life.&rdquo; All are included in a single volume published by the American Unitarian association (Boston). A biography was prepared by his nephew, W. H. Channing (3 vols., Boston, 1848). Translations of Channing's writings &ldquo;have been, either wholly or in part, published in the German, French, Italian, Hungarian, Icelandic, and Russian languages.&rdquo; While in America he is best known as a theologian and preacher, his influence abroad is said to be chiefly as a writer on subjects of social ethics. — His brother, Walter, physician, b. in Newport, R. I., 15 April, 1786; d. in Boston, Mass., 27 July, 1876, entered Harvard in 1804, but left in 1807 on account of the &ldquo;rebellion&rdquo; of that year, and afterward received his degree out of course. After studying medicine in Boston and Philadelphia, he received his diploma from the University of Pennsylvania, and then studied in Edinburgh, and at Guy's and St. Thomas's