The Works of William E. Channing, Volume 5

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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 233 - Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, [as] unto a faithful Creator.
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 379 - Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he who doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven." " Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you." "He that heareth and doeth these my sayings...
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 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 159 - You will here see that to me labor has great dignity. It is not merely the grand instrument by which the earth is overspread with fruitfulness and beauty, and the ocean subdued, and matter wrought into innumerable forms for comfort and ornament. It has a far higher function, which is to give force to the will, efficiency, courage, the capacity of endurance and of persevering devotion to far-reaching plans.
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 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...

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