complished theologians; and no individual was farther from claiming any authority in matters of opinion. He was never the apostle of a doctrine or a sect."

At the crisis of the secession of Unitarianism from Calvinistic orthodoxy, or rather the secession of the latter from Unitarianism, he was somewhat active in the controversy; but not so much in defence of liberal theology as of liberal rights. The reader of his memoirs and his articles in the "Christian Disciple," (the Unitarian organ of those times,) cannot fail to see that he exerted himself, not so much to vindicate the new opinions of the period, as the right of his brethren to discuss them without ecclesiastical proscription; a right certainly not very questionable under the Congregational régime of the New-England Churches. He says himself:

"It was not so much for the purpose of defending these opinions, as of encouraging fellow-Christians to use their own minds, and to examine freely the doctrines of religion, that I entered the field of controversy. I felt then, what I now more deeply feel, that the human mind is to make progress by freedom, by the deliberate, impartial, and independent exercise of its faculties."

It was, in fact, that regard for individual liberty of thought which was the passion, the moral idiosyncrasy, of the man-the source alike of his chief excellencies and chief errors-that drew him into the polemical arena; and when he had manfully defended the liberty of the mind, he paused but little to dabble in the subordinate questions, but gave his energies to more spiritual and practical interests. As late as 1841 he says:

"I do not speak as a Unitarian, but as an independent Christian. I have little or no interest in Unitarians, as a sect. I have hardly anything to do with them. I can endure no sectarian bonds."

What were Channing's theological opinions? To say he was a Unitarian, in the etymological sense of the word, would be just, and so it would be to say the same of John Calvin, or John Wesley; to say he was a Unitarian, in the denominational use of the word at present in New-England, would be very vague; for what is more vague than the existing theology of New-England Unitarianism? Had it not been for what we have chosen to call his accidental prominence in the Unitarian movement, we believe that the impartial theological critic would classify him most readily with Locke, Samuel Clarke, Watts, and similar thinkers, and extend to him the charity with which the defective tenets of these great and good men have been regarded. He expressly placed himself in the rank of Dr. Watts, and disclaimed the views of Priestley, Belsham, and Socinians generally. The later liberalism of Unitarianism-invalidating the sacred canon; denying the miracles, the superhuman character of Christ, redemption by him,

*Christian Examiner for September, 1848.

future punishment, &c.—he did not share; and to his exemption from these disastrous errors we ascribe the superior spirituality, nay, we are compelled to say holiness, which was the very temper of his being, and will render him, in the estimation of the more impartial future, such an anomaly among Unitarians as Fenelon was among Romanists. His biographer declares :

"The fact undeniably was, that, while he formed the most free and generous estimate of human nature, he held opinions, in regard to the Divine government, spiritual influences, a Mediator, and the kingdom of heaven, which, by most liberal Christians, would be considered rather mystical than rational."

His views of the character of Christ are indeterminate; but full of reverence and love:

"God has given his own Son-a being respecting whose nature, perhaps, revelation communicates no precise ideas; but whom we are yet taught to view as sustaining a peculiar relation to the infinite Father, and peculiarly beloved by him. Jesus Christ is the Son of God in a peculiar sense; the temple of the Divinity; the brightest image of his glory. In seeing him we see the Fa ther.... We hear him claiming the honours of the Son of God, of the promised Messiah, of the Saviour of the world. We not only hear him assenting to the question, Art thou the Christ?' but adding to his assent a declaration of his glory, which he must have known would have been peculiarly offensive to the Jews, and applying to himself language which, under the old dispensation, had been limited to God-thus expressing his intimate union with the Father. According to these Scriptures, Jesus Christ is not a Teacher whose agency was chiefly confined to the time when he was on earth. He ever lives, and is ever active for mankind. He sustains other offices than those of Teacher; he is Mediator, Intercessor, Lord, and Saviour. He has a permanent and constant connexion with mankind, and a most intimate union with his Church."

While he dissented from the precise definitions of the atonement usually given by orthodox writers, and (as in his celebrated "NewYork Sermon") assailed them with more rhetoric than logic, he nevertheless believed in redemption through Christ. He gives the following statement of the opinions of himself and some of his associates :

"We agreed in our late conference that a majority of our brethren believe that Jesus Christ is more than a man; that he existed before the world; that he literally came from Heaven to save our race; that he sustains other offices than those of a Teacher and Witness to the truth; and that he still acts for our benefit, and is our Intercessor with the Father. This we agreed to be the prevalent sentiment of our brethren. With respect to the Atonement, the great body of liberal Christians seem to me to accord precisely with the author of Bible News, [Noah Worcester,] or rather, both agree very much with the found Butler. Both agree that Jesus Christ, by his sufferings and intercession, obtains forgiveness for sinful men; or that, on account, or in consequence, of what Christ has done and suffered, the punishment of sin is averted from the penitent, and blessings, forfeited by sin, are bestowed. The doctrine of the Atonement, taken in the broad sense which I have before stated, is not rejected by Unitarians."

pro

This statement is, however, qualified with an emphatic denial that "the ever-blessed God suffered and died on the cross;" a denial which

we would all make with equal emphasis. On this greatest of all subjects, it must be admitted, in the language of a foreign journal, "that, though he believed in some mysterious way, which is not explained, that Jesus came to save the world; that he himself, if saved at all, was to be so through the mediation and intercession of the Redeemer;" yet his position here was "not so clear and defined as that taken by him on questions of infinitely less importance to himself and to others, on almost every other question to which he had turned his attention."* Still we believe he so far comprehended, and, above all, relied upon the mediatorial office of our Lord, as to experience its efficacy in his own soul. Christ was the ever-recurring theme of his writings. Christ's teachings, his example, his glorious mediation -whatever mystery might encompass it were to him the only hope of the world, not only of its purely religious interests, but of its social and political, its temporal and eternal destinies. He never refers to the subject of Christ's character, aside from sectarian disputation, without kindling with ardour; and if to be imbued with the meekness and love of Christ, is the mark of true discipleship, then assuredly this great but erring man was a Christian.

Channing believed in regeneration, or the "new birth," though, with most theological writers, he held that it was usually a gradual experience. His language is often quite as strong on this subject as the customary style of evangelical authors:

"A religious character, then, is an acquisition, and implies a change; a change which requires labour and prayer, which requires aid and strength from Heaven; a change so great and important, that it deserves to be called a new birth. The Christian is a new man.- -By the precepts, doctrines, motives, promises of Christianity, and by the secret influences of God's Spirit on the heart, they have been raised to a faith, hope, and love which may be called a new life. They have been born again.”

While at Richmond, surrounded by irreligion and immorality, he believed himself the subject of this inward change. He wrote to his uncle:

"I believe that I never experienced that change of heart which is necessary to constitute a Christian, till within a few months past. The worldling would laugh at me; he would call conversion a farce. But the man who has felt the influences of the Holy Spirit can oppose fact and experience to empty declamation and contemptuous sneers. You remember the language of the blind man whom Jesus healed: 'This I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see.' Such is the language which the real Christian may truly utter. Once, and not long ago, I was blind,-blind to my own condition, blind to the goodness of God, and blind to the love of my Redeemer. Now I behold, with shame and confusion, the depravity and rottenness of my heart. Now I behold, with love and admiration, the long-suffering and infinite benevolence of Deity. All my sentiments and affections have lately changed. I once considered mere moral

*Tait's Edinburgh Magazine.

attainments as the only object I had to pursue. I have now solemnly given myself up to God. I consider supreme love to him as the first of all duties, and morality seems but a branch from the vigorous root of religion. I love mankind, because they are the children of God. I practise temperance, and strive for purity of heart, that I may become a temple for his Holy Spirit to dwell in.”

He was some time, however, advancing toward this point of his spiritual progress. Years prior to it, he had been awakened to an interest in religion during a revival in New-London, where he was preparing for college in the family of his uncle; while at Cambridge he made some progress, and determined to devote himself to the Christian ministry; but at Richmond he emerged into clearer light, though, as he afterward insisted, his conversion was a life-long proWhen questioned by a good Calvinist whether he had not, at some time, been converted, he replied, "I would say not, unless the whole of my life may be called, as it truly has been, a process of conversion." To which his orthodox friend quaintly answered, “Then, friend Channing, you were born regenerate; for you certainly are now a child of God."

cess.

His later references to his experience at Richmond are very touching. The death of his father had reduced the resources of his family, and compelled him to accept the office of a private tutor in that city. Infidelity and iniquity prevailed around him:

"I lived alone, too poor to buy books, spending my days and nights in an out-building, with no one beneath my roof except during the hours of schoolkeeping. There I toiled as I have never done since; for gradually my constitution sank under the unremitting exertion. With not a human being to whom I could communicate my deepest thoughts and feelings, and shrinking from common society, I passed through intellectual and moral conflicts, through excitements of heart and mind, so absorbing as often to banish sleep, and to destroy almost wholly the power of digestion. I was worn well-nigh to a skeleton. Yet I look back on those days and nights of loneliness and frequent gloom with thankfulness. If I ever struggled with my whole soul for purity, truth, and goodness, it was there. There, amid sore trials, the great question, I trust, was settled within me, whether I would obey the higher or lower principles of my nature-whether I would be the victim of passion, the world, or the free child and servant of God. . . . In a licentious, intemperate city, one spirit, at least, was preparing, in silence and loneliness, to toil, not wholly in vain, for truth and holiness."

The descriptions of the spiritual life which are scattered through Dr. Channing's writings, would (were it not for his studied avoidance of the usual theological technics, and the peculiarity of his modes of thought) befit the pages of Jeremy Taylor or William Law; the latter was indeed his favourite practical writer. The supreme love of God was to him the central element of religion; he dwelt upon it with the fervour and absolute emphasis of Fenelon, and verged upon, if he did not actually adopt, the doctrine of Disinterestedness, as taught by Hopkins, whose ministry he occasionally attended in New

port. The cold and lifeless didactics, usual to Socinianism, entered not into his ministrations; if he chose not to distinguish morality from religion, it was not because he reduced the latter to the former, but because he exalted the former to the latter-basing morals on piety. There is, indeed, throughout his writings that meek but fervid spirituality which has always been the common trait of sanctified minds, whether of Fenelon among Romanists, Edwards among Calvinists, or Fletcher among Arminians—a mark of essential identity in spirit, notwithstanding their utter variance in matters of opinion and form.

It was this evangelical temper, together with his abstinence from polemical strife, that produced, in the latter part of his life, the report that he had essentially modified, if not abandoned, his earlier opinions. His biographer takes special care to guard his reputation against this suspicion; we are convinced that he died, as he had lived, a high Arian; but believe, at the same time, that he perceived, in his maturer years, the indefiniteness of most of his theological opinions, and lost, proportionately, his tenacity for them. There was a rich ripening of his religious character as he approached the end of his life; but on many of the topics of former and ardent controversy he speaks with cautious misgivings; he had become convinced of their difficulty, had waived them, had become anxious to settle down into godly repose, performing the evident duties, and cherishing the consoling affections and hopes of the Gospel. We mention this fact as not so much a detraction from his opinions, as a beautiful aspect of his later history; one not uncommon to good men in the ripeness of their years and piety, whatever may have been the earlier severities of their prejudices. In 1841, about a year before his death, he wrote:

"I am more detached from a denomination, and strive to feel more my connexion with the universal Church, with all good and holy men. I am little of a Unitarian, have little sympathy with the system of Priestley and Belsham, and stand aloof from all but those who strive and pray for clearer light, who look for a purer and more effectual manifestation of Christian truth."

Of Unitarianism, as a system or movement, he unquestionably did not feel satisfied in his later years. In 1837 he wrote as follows:"I feel that among liberal Christians the preaching has been too vague, has wanted unity, has scattered attention too much."

In 1839 he thus expresses himself:

"I would that I could look to Unitarianism with more hope. But this system was, at its recent revival, a protest of the understanding against absurd dogmas, rather than the work of deep religious principle, and was early paralyzed by the mixture of a material philosophy, and fell too much into the hands of scholars and political reformers; and the consequence is, a want of vitality and force, which gives us but little hope of its accomplishing much under its present auspices or in its present form."