William Ellery Channing

Who was William Ellery Channing?

William Ellery Channing was 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 within his "Baltimore Sermon" of May 5, 1819, at the ordination of a future famous theologian and educator in his own right, Jared Sparks, as the first minister of the newly organized "First Independent Church of Baltimore". Here he espoused his principles and tenets of the developing philosophy and theology of "Unitarianism" resulted in the organization later in 1825 of the first Unitarian denomination in America and the later developments and mergers between Unitarians and Universalists resulting finally in the Unitarian Universalist Association of America in 1961.

Famous Quotes:

• The world is governed by opinion.
• It is far more important to me to preserve an unblemished conscience than to compass any object however great.
• Undoubtedly a man is to labor to better his condition, but first to better himself.
• Innocent amusements are such as excite moderately, and such as produce a cheerful frame of mind, not boisterous mirth; such as refresh, instead of exhausting, the system; such as recur frequently, rather than continue long; such as send us back to our daily duties invigorated in body and spirit; such as we can partake of in the presence and society of respectable friends; such as consist with and are favorable to a grateful piety; such as are chastened by self-respect, and are accompanied with the consciousness that life has a higher end than to be amused.
• 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.
• One good anecdote is worth a volume of biography.
• God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.
• It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds, and these invaluable means of communication are in the reach of all. In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours.
• True love is the parent of humility.
• Do anything rather than give yourself to reverie.