The Works of William E. Channing, D.D.George G. Channing, 1849 |
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Abolitionism Abolitionists amidst Atheism awaken believe blessings bound cause character Christ Christian church civilized connexion conscience crime death divine doctrine duty earth elevation ergy evil faith fear feel fellow-creatures force freedom friends give God's Gospel happiness heart heaven honor hope human nature idea important improvement infinite influences institutions intel intellect interest Jesus Jesus Christ JOHN SULLIVAN DWIGHT justice laboring class laws Liberal Christians liberty light ligion live means ment mind minister ministry moral multitude nations never nexions NOAH WORCESTER object opinion outward pain passionate movements passions peace philanthropy piety poor preach present principles prosperity race religion religious reverence Scriptures selfish sentiment slave slave-holder slavery social society solemn soul South speak spirit strength suffering sympathy teach thing thought tion toil Trinitarianism true truth uncon union Unitarian views virtue West Indies whilst wrong zeal
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Page 90 - And is it in the flight of threescore years To push eternity from human thought, And smother souls immortal in the dust ? A soul immortal, spending all her fires, Wasting her strength in strenuous idleness, Thrown into tumult, raptur'd or alarm'd, At aught this scene can threaten or indulge, Resembles ocean into tempest wrought, To waft a feather, or to drown a fly.
Page 358 - For honourable age is not that which standeth in length of time, nor that is measured by number of years. But wisdom is the gray hair unto men, and an unspotted life is old age.
Page 340 - What is there in human nature to awaken respect and tenderness, if man is the unprotected insect of a day ? and what is he more, if atheism be true ! Erase all thought and fear of God from a community, and selfishness and sensuality would absorb the whole man. Appetite, knowing no restraint, and poverty and suffering, having no solace or hope, would trample in scorn on the restraints of human laws. Virtue, duty, principle, would be mocked and spurned as unmeaning sounds. A sordid self-interest would...
Page 158 - Man owes his growth, his energy, chiefly to that striving of the will, that conflict with difficulty, which we call effort. Easy, pleasant work does not make robust minds, does not give men a consciousness of their powers, does not train them to endurance, to perseverance, to steady force of will, that force without which all other acquisitions avail nothing.
Page 418 - Commonwealth, but the free circulation of truth, from the lips and pens of the wise and good. If such men abandon the right of free discussion ; if, awed by threats, they suppress their convictions ; if rulers succeed in silencing every voice but that which approves them ; if nothing reaches the people but what will lend support to men in power, — farewell to liberty. The form of a free government may remain, but the life, the soul, the substance is fled.
Page 16 - ... exercise over each other, and exercise it more and more in proportion to the spread of intelligence and civilization. The world is governed much more by opinion than by laws. It is not the judgment of courts, but the moral judgment of individuals and masses of men, which is the chief wall of defence round property and life.
Page 185 - They flash on us as lights from heaven. A man seriously given to the culture of his mind in virtue and truth, finds himself under better teaching than that of man. Revelations of his own soul, of God's intimate presence, of the grandeur of the creation, of the glory of disinterestedness, of the deformity of wrong-doing, of the dignity of universal justice, of the might of moral principle, of the immutableness of truth, of immortality, and of the inward sources of happiness; these revelations, awakening...
Page 157 - God in placing us in a world where labor alone can keep us alive. I would not change, if I could, our subjection to physical laws, our exposure to hunger and cold, and the necessity of constant conflicts with the material world. I would not, if I could, so temper the elements, that they should infuse into us only grateful sensations...
Page 49 - ... was this a reason for keeping up the fires, that they had burned two hundred years? In the Eastern world, successive despots, not for two hundred years, but for twice two thousand, have claimed the right of life and death over millions, and with no law but their own will, have beheaded, bowstrung, starved, tortured unhappy men without number, who have incurred their wrath ; and does the lapse of so many centuries sanctify murder and ferocious power ? But the great argument remains.
Page 166 - A bird may be shot upward to the skies by a foreign force ; but it rises, in the true sense of the word, only when it spreads its own wings and soars by its own living power. So a man may be thrust upward into a conspicuous place by outward accidents ; but he rises only in so far as he exerts himself, and expands his best faculties, and ascends by a free effort to a nobler region of thought and action.