vancing drearier inward skepticisms; when violent socialisms were appealing to vague and turbid "universal sentiments ;" and when the stern and jealous lovers of republican freedom necessarily strove to assert for the spiritual will of all men that measured responsibility, that sphere of real but limited and equal self-control, which was most closely analogous to their political faith. Channing's father was a Calvinist; and Channing found in actual possession of the religious world in which he was educated a kind of gradually rationalizing Calvinism, which was not very averse to fortify itself by the aid of the latitudinarian school of the English Establishment, at that time represented by Paley. In both schools of thought, the ends and realities of religion were entirely subordinated to the means: the Calvinistic theologians stopping short of any care for the spiritual life to be desired, in their technical interest about the "means of redemption ;" and the latitudinarians, in like manner, ignoring the objects of faith, in their anxiety about the means of proof about contrivance, testimony, and "unintentional coïncidences." No wonder that Channing found the received divinity a most dreary study. On one side were explanations how to get redeemed, the point being apparently immaterial what the reality of redeemed life would be when the process was over; on another side he was deluged with convincing demonstrations of the existence (elsewhere) of God and Christ, but in no way shown how they did, as actual existences, live and prove themselves in his own life. This was the state of the religious literature of the day when Channing began his studies. Social and political interests were passing into the young republic, and, partly as a consequence, the old religious formulæ were dying out. Paley's consecration of "violent motives," and Edwards's predestinarianism, were no doctrines for a young and vigorous nation, rapidly growing in power and activity, and thrilled by the great vibrations of hopeful political change which reached them from the old world. difficulties at all, they touched them on the external side; rather raising, for example, questions as to the formal equality of different classes than as to their inner character and mutual moral dependence. The issues, as to the true relations between employers and employed-as to the relations between the criminal or dangerous classes, and society at large-as to feminine capabilities and duties-and as to all the more intricate problems of social duty and social guilt which occupy us so much now-had not yet been raised or cared for. And accordingly Channing, though he elevated the religion of his day to sustain and guide a noble political faith, never kindled in it that perfect glow which fuses into one temper the deeply channeled class-feelings of a highly civilized society, and which alone ever enabled any man, even for a moment, to live by sympathy the inmost life, and almost to avail himself of the most individual experience, of another. There was an extreme simplicity of constitution in Channing's mind, which gave him a certain advantage in treating political morality, which is almost always simple: but when he touches social problems, this simplicity amounts to tenuity of treatment; you feel that the complex and crossing threads of these questions are not gathered up in his mind. His faith reflected perfectly, and justified from the deepest spiritual sources, the noble New-England passion for freedom; but it never attained, and scarcely even sought for, the religious springs of a deep and spontaneous social unity. It kept even to the last much of the bare moulding, and of the self-tasked and self-contained temper, of the old Presbyterian thought. Paley lived in the study and admiration of divine means, Channing in the contemplation and pursuit of divine ends; and though this was the characteristic power of his mind, it may be truly said to have been his weakness, that there was no "natural" man to graft them into. "His soul was like a star, and dwelt apart." His spiritual aims were ranged round his will in fair ideal perfection; but there But if unsocial latitudinarian philosophy seemed no mass of natural tastes, disposiand grim tyrannic theology were little tions, and temperament to fill up the suited to that place and time, it was intervening space. And consequently he neither the place nor the time for a reli- never appreciated that Pauline side of gion of fully developed social power to theology which implies and asserts a spring up. The enthusiasms of the day double nature in man. The noble will, were, strictly speaking, political rather the clear sense of freedom and responsithan social. So far as they touched social | bility, was at the center of his character; his presence of mind and foresight, his calm contentment, and above all his steady growth the question rose whether his energy of will and wisdom were not most displayed in this rificed impulse to method, fullness of force to willingness to wait. . . . . Seemingly he had sacorder."* around it only an etheral atmosphere, in which shone luminous purposes of good. His life reads like one long series of high and free volitions; it has not that close texture of human interests and motives, that spontaneous mingling of high purposes with the commoner impulses and enjoyments of human life, which give them If the illumined critic had said that Dr. their deepest social power, and possibly Channing was kept from the highest good even their widest influence. Every thing by his pursuit of rectitude rather than by was an "aim" to Channing, or it was his love of it, we think the criticism would nothing at all. "Great men," he said, have been just. If there is, and can be, "are produced by great ends." This is no binding religion while we stop comno doubt true: but the ends must find pletely short of the aims and objects of their way round to the springs of life, so life, after the fashion of Paley, yet there as to be "beginnings," and unconscious is no doubt that the highest good is beginnings, as well as ends; they must reached by those who trust rather than mix freely in states of mind into which strain, who are content to have aims given they do not enter consciously or predomi- them rather than to toil arduously after nantly; they must dissolve themselves, so aims of their own. Channing was conas to defy analysis, into all sorts of insig-scious of this defect in the cast of his own nificant and secular pursuits, if they are to take their most influential and expressive form. They can not remain in the insoluble shape of "great ideas," if they are really to work on men, and color the aspects of social life. Channing's was, no doubt, a mind of more delicate grain than that of even his great English contemporary Dr. Arnold, and certainly of a key quite as noble. But in this respect Arnold was vastly superior; if, as has been truly said, he too was deficient in a solvent humor, by which his overtasking views of children's duty might have been modified, and his sometimes strained "moral thoughtfulness" relaxed, yet he had an eagerness about human arrangements of all sorts which gave his "high principles" a more natural and less formal and didactic vent than they found with Dr. Channing. "A remarkable person," says his accomplished biographer, "in a state of mystic illumination, once said of Dr. Channing: 'He was kept from the highest good by the love of rectitude.' Very probably he would himself have verified the correctness of this criticism. There certainly had been periods of his life when he restrained himself too stiffly, though every year of maturing virtue rendered him more free. . . . . An earnestness, a susceptibility to profound emotion, an exuberance of sanguine cheerfulness, a chivalrous daring, a stern yet smiling heroism, a poetic glow-flashed out at times through his guarded evenness of deportment, giving promise religious character in later days: he felt that he had not attained to the "wise passiveness" of the poet, that he had been too ready to believe that "Nothing of itself would come, But we must still be seeking." Whether it be or be not true, as his biographer hints, that this was not a natural necessity of his mind from the first, but rather a tendency cherished by his deliberate purpose, we have little means of judging. But it seems clear at least, that if his character acted strongly on the type of his faith, his faith reäcted strongly upon his character. Let us look briefly at its most striking elements. Perhaps the central conviction in Channing's faith was the unreserved and intense belief not only in the freedom of the human will, but in the real power of the will to adopt and interweave into human life, or to reject and resist, the divine purposes and influences. This doctrine was preached, at least in his early life, quite beyond the verge of spiritual health, and yet probably never issued in spiritual pride. At all events, the noblest features of his noble character, as well as his weakest points, were due to these "voluntary virtues." There sprang from it that resolute determination to weigh anxiously all that could be urged on a side of thought that was uncongenial to of a higher style of greatness than that which he *Channing's Memoir, edited by his Nephew, him, and to weigh it the more carefully the more clearly it led to a conclusion which he could not endure. "I owe the little which I am," he says, "to the conscientiousness with which I have listened to objections springing up in my own mind to what I have inclined, and sometimes thirsted, to believe; and I have attained through this to a serenity of faith that once seemed denied in the present state." The same high mettle that would face, as a duty, all that is disquieting, appears, though perhaps in a more fanciful form, in a remarkable letter to Mr. Blanco White. "I have thought, that by analyzing a pain I have been able to find an element of pleasure in it. I have thought, too, that by looking a pain fully in the face, and comprehending it, I have diminished its intensity. Distinct perception, instead of aggravating, decreases evil. This I have found when reading accounts of terrible accidents which have at first made me shudder. By taking them to pieces, and conceiving each part distinctly, I have been able to think of them calmly, and to feel that I too could pass through them. Sympathy increases by the process, but not fear. The sympathy weakens the personal fear; but this is not the whole explanation. The soul, by resisting the first shudder, and by placing itself near the terrible through an act of the will, puts forth energies which reveal it to itself, and make it conscious of something within mightier than suffering. The power of distinct knowledge in giving courage I have never seen insisted on, and yet it is a part of my experience. The unknown, the vague, the dark, what imagination invests with infinity-this terrifies; and the remark applies not to physical evils, but to all others." And the same characteristic supremacy of will shines out in Dr. Channing's whole moral theory. He could not bear to see undeliberate action. He held that the will should be always in court, ready to hear appeal after appeal, rather than to pledge the future to a mere decision of the past. "There is such a thing as being slaves to our own past good impressions. I think perfection lies in a present power over ourselves, in a superiority to what is good as well as evil in our past course, in acting from a fresh present energy. Few of us attain this. Most good men turn their benevolent objects into hobby-horses, and ride them most furiously; or rather are hurried on by them passively, unresistingly. Such is the weakness of our nature. Our tendency is to slavery. The difference is, that some are the slaves of good, others of bad impulses. That blessed freedom in which we govern ourselves according to our ever-improving and daily changing perceptions of right is an eminence to which we slowly rise." And even in his purely intellectual capacity, the most characteristic touches are those of a mind which has checked itself half way, in order to note the course of an impulse, and record its peculiarity. "I would avoid," he says, in the course of an unhealthy list of regulations as to his inward self-government-"I would avoid the diffuseness which characterizes anger." The deliberate respect which he entertained, however, for this conscious selfgovernment, led him into a self-scrutiniz ing habit of mind that never did any man any good. Like many other theologians, he had, at least in early years, no faith that God could show him his sins unless he went through the most worrying catechetical process to find them out. He tried every test that spiritual chemistry could suggest to discover traces of sin. "Have my thoughts this day been governed, my attention concentrated? what have I learned? what has constituted my chief pleasure? have I been humble? have I had peace ?" etc.; painfully showing that he did not then believe that the "word of God was quick and powerful as any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit." He did not wait for the secret uneasiness that is the work of God; but thought that, even "if our hearts condemn us not," conscience might be cross-examined till she gave up her secret. Channing was too little of a quietist. He writes at times as if he thought that "every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God" was wrung forth by human will. "Force of moral purpose," he says, "makes us happy. There is an exhilaration, a hope, a joy, springing up within us when we will with power what we see to be good, when we are conscious of treading under foot the low principles and interests which would part us from God and duty." Is not this rather the imaginative will of the ideal conflict, the joyous will of the poet. conceiving vanquished Satans, than of the practical man sorrowfully beating them? Generally speaking, the Mephistopheles is not very skillful and formidable whom it "exhilarating" process to beat. Perhaps the less splash and effort the will makes in these conflicts, the more it does is an If it declines to entertain evil, it has done | instinct to assume it, but begin instead to its work; the good that enters and occupies instead is not its own. discuss what value we are to attach to our impressions; and it is certainly not less easy to turn spiritual realities into shadows or mere foretastes of the future, by holding aloof from the influence they bring. But Channing's high value for individuality not only implied a latent distrust of social influence; he expressly teaches that society is valuable only as subsidiary to the spiritual life it cherishes in individuals. stand the social influences to which he is at first subjected. Society serves us, by furnishing objects, occasions, materials, excitements, into vigorous exercise, may acquire a consciousthrough which the whole soul may be brought ness of its free and responsible nature, may become a law to itself, and may rise to the happiness and dignity of framing and improving itself without limit or end. Inward, creative energy is the highest good which accrues to us from our social principles and connections. The mind is enriched, not by what it passively what it receives. We would especially affirm receives from others, but by its own action on of virtue, that it does not consist in what we inherit, or what comes to us from abroad. It is of inward growth, and it grows by nothing so much as by resistance of foreign influences, by acting from our deliberate convictions in opposition to the principles of sympathy and imitation. According to these views, our social nature and connections are means. Inward power is the end; a power which is to triumph over, and control the influence of society." It is clear, that neither on its stronger nor on its weaker side is this high doctrine of self-regulation-this horror of any concession of the command of the mind, even for the shortest interval, to any power except deliberate free-will-likely to be an element in a strong social faith. Channing's fear and hatred of "epidemic religion," his fixed belief that "all strong passion has the effect of insanity on the judgment," were not the characteristics of a man who would regard social power to and calls forth intellectual and moral energy "Society is chiefly important as it ministers and influence as in any way a primary and freedom. Its action on the individual is test of truth. Still less was his positive beneficial in proportion as it awakens in him a teaching as to minute and constant self-power to act on himself, and to control or withculture, his high estimate of spiritual endeavor even in the least practical sphere of life, his early tendency to inculcate morbid self-regulation, likely to draw a religious society into much closer union. A common life must be the ground of close social union. Channing's teaching tended to make each man conscious of his own individuality-alike in its noblest and its most painful phases-more and more profoundly. He spoke of spiritual life too much as an aspiration, too little as a reality. He sometimes made men feel the infinite distance between themselves and God-the spiritual immensity across which the poor human will must cheerfully work its way-more keenly than the power which, if they would but recognize it, already worked in them. His was often the teaching of want; the aim was distant, the way was long, and for each man solitary. Even the fact of God's help had to be painfully realized by an effort of thought. He is apt rather to tell men what they ought to feel on the hypothesis of religion, than to explain to them what they do feel in the light of religious certainties. The "thought of God" frequently takes the place in his writings of God. Of course this is often the state of any sincere man's mind. But realities, not thoughts of realities, are the basis of all union; facts, not hopes. And Channing, by the ideal cast which he teaches us to give to every spiritual influence that acts on the mind-keeping it at arm's length till we have weighed and estimated its value-often turns a certainty into an aspiration. We know how easy it is to doubt the existence even of the material universe, if we will not follow our first This doctrine pieces-in with the whole temper of Channing's mind, which, as he himself was aware, was not social. Even the closest ties seem scarcely to penetrate to this inner essence of his spirit, till they had been made the "materials and excitements" of spiritual contemplation. "I sometimes feel," he once said in allusion to his love for his children, "as if the affection which springs from thought were stronger than that of instinct." And all social ties were, in his view, intended rather to mature and refine special fruits in the soul of each-to yield "The harvest of a quiet eye That sleeps and broods on its own heart," than to answer any end in themselves. A society was, in Channing's mind, never so perfect as when it exercised no characteristic or controlling influence of its own in swaying or moulding the minds of those who formed it. He held that sympathy, in the deeper concerns of the spirit, must generally be given in the dark, and received in the twilight. And as it never seemed to cross him that a society's faith, if noble at all, is a higher and better, and moreover quite different thing from the sum of the individual faiths it contains, he had no standard by which to try the value of society except that of the effect which it produced on individual character. He would have said with the poet : "Is it strange That our diviner impulses, great thoughts, find it? It is the exceeding goodness of our God We are mind for clearer intellectual vision, or able to read its moral experience under the fascination of that-and it would shrink up into absolute individuality—the narrowness of spiritual death. Possibly Dr. Channing's school might reply, that the value of all social influence is only to open to us as it were the character of God; and that, He remaining, all our moral experience would remain, even though every human being were annihilated. Yet is this true? Is not the greater part of our spiritual life as a matter of fact, still conditioned by the individual channels of human influence through which we have drawn it? Would "progress " - would life, as we understand it - that is, the growth of thoughts and faculties, all of which have immediate and direct concern with the society in which we are placedbe longer possible if the very law of our being, the very condition of our conscience, the very spring of our piety, were annihilated by the annihilation of the other members of that living body of which we are part? It is the condition of human And this was Dr. Channing's constant life that we could not be children at all creed; not that he would have held it in without also being brothers. The social any sense depreciative of the moral digni- law of our being reaches, we are confident, ty and independence of human will, but to the deepest depth of our most solitary simply in this, that the ultimate and deep- life. A man's individual life could not est religious life of man can not include grow, nay, could not be that of a man at any human sympathy and social unity-all, could he be truly cut off from the that it is in a depth below the deepest life of society, and is a direct act of duty or love to the Father of spirits. This faith underlay all Channing's writings. But is it true? Is it given to human spirits to be children at all without being also brothers? The law of society is written on the individual conscience; and spiritual life is not possible to individuals at all if you strike out the social conditions under which it is invariably found. Indeed, truth itself, the search for which is usually supposed to isolate the mind, is truth no longer if you erase the conditions of society. We perceive all complete and perfect truth through others more than through ourselves. It is through our union with others, through their life in our minds and ours in theirs, that even the most solitary acts of true spiritual life become possible. The mysterious power of social influence is not merely an aid to the perception of truth, but the very condition of holding it. Suppose for a single instant that the mind could be absolutely isolated-no longer drawn towards this community of man; even in solitude and isolation it is the life of a social being so long as it is human. Channing's difficulty in realizing this truth lay, we believe, in his religious position. He had grasped for himself the truth of moral freedom. Brought up in the gloomy belief that the shadow of predestination hung over the world that there was nothing for man to do but to live his appointed lot, the truth had suddenly dawned upon him that he had indeed a free creative will, a power of really becoming a "fellow-worker" with God. This conviction inspired him at once with that profoundly "generous view of human nature" so much exaggerated-or at least so little balanced by the belief which is its counterpart - in his school. And yet the sole point on which he rested this constant assertion of the "dignity of human nature" was moral freedom. All the involuntary affections and instincts of man he was inclined to distrust in the comparison; at least he held that they were to be always and in |