William Ellery Channing Quotes

Ask the majority of Christians what they consider the greatest evil from which Christ freed humanity and they will say: from Hell, from eternal fire, from punishment in the next world. As a corollary to this they think that salvation is something that someone else can achieve for us. The word hell, which is seldom met in the Holy Scriptures, has done much harm to Christianity as a result of false interpretations. People run away from external hell which they are made to fear most of all. The salvation that man needs most and that which gives him freedom is redemption from the evil within his soul. There is something far worse than external punishment. It is the sin of the soul being in rebellion against God; the soul, endowed with God's strength, yielding itself to the force of bestial instinct; the soul which exists before God, yet fears the threats and fury of men, preferring human glory to its own peaceful awareness of virtue. There is no fate worse than this. And it is this that the unrepentant person carries with him to the grave. And it is this we ought to fear.

To gain salvation, in the highest meaning of the word, means to raise your fallen spirit, cure the sick soul, give it back its freedom of thought, conscience and love. In this lies the salvation for which Christ died. It is for this salvation that we have been given the Holy Spirit, and it is towards this salvation that the Christian teaching should be directed.

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common - this is my symphony.

The greatest man is he who chooses the right with invincible resolution, who resists the sorest temptations from within and without, who bears the heaviest burdens cheerfully, who is calmest in storms, and most fearless under menace and frowns, whose reliance on truth, on virtue, on God, is most unfaltering; and is this a greatness which is apt to make a show, or which is most likely to abound in conspicuous station?

All noble enthusiasms pass through a feverish stage, and grow wiser and more serene.

There are seasons, in human affairs, of inward and outward revolution, when new depths seem to be broken up in the soul, when new wants are unfolded in multitudes, and a new and undefined good is thirsted for. There are periods when...to dare, is the highest wisdom.

The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be propagated.

We do, then, with all earnestness, though without reproaching our brethren, protest against the irrational and unscriptural doctrine of the Trinity. "To us," as to the Apostle and the primitive Christians, "there is one God, even the Father." With Jesus, we worship the Father, as the only living and true God. We are astonished, that any man can read the New Testament, and avoid the conviction, that the Father alone is God.

I affirm, and would maintain, that true religion consists in proposing, as our great end, a growing likeness to the Supreme Being. Its noblest influence consists in making us more and more partakers of the Divinity. For this it is to be preached. Religious instruction should aim chiefly to turn men's aspirations and efforts to that perfection of the soul, which constitutes it a bright image of God. Such is the topic now to be discussed; and I implore Him, whose glory I seek, to aid me in unfolding and enforcing it with simplicity and clearness, with a calm and pure zeal, and with unfeigned charity.

In general, we do well to let an opponent's motives alone. We are seldom just to them. Our own motives on such occasions are often worse than those we assail.

Between, I stand, a creature taught
To stand between two silent floors.

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours.

I see the marks of God in the heavens and the earth, but how much more in a liberal intellect, in magnanimity, in unconquerable rectitude, in a philanthropy which forgives every wrong, and which never despairs of the cause of Christ and human virtue. I do and I must reverence human nature... I thank God that my own lot is bound up with that of the human race.

The deliberate, solemn conviction of good men through the world, that slavery is a grievous wrong to human nature, will make itself felt. To increase this moral power is every man's duty. To embody and express this great truth is in every man's power; and thus every man can do something to break the chain of the slave.

Every man is a volume, if you know how to read him.

god be thanked for books. they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of the past ages