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I have chosen for the subject of this lecture Self-culture, or the care which every man owes to himself, to the unfolding and perfecting of his nature.
William Ellery Channing
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What a sublime doctrine it is, that goodness cherished now is eternal life already entered on!
William Ellery Channing
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Did any man at his death ever regret his conflicts with himself, his victories over appetite, his scorn of impure pleasure, or his sufferings for righteousness' sake?
William Ellery Channing
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We can fix our eyes on perfection, and make almost every thing speed towards it. This is, indeed, a noble prerogative of our nature.
William Ellery Channing
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Everything here but the soul of man is a passing shadow. The only enduring substance is within. When shall we awake to the sublime greatness, the perils, the accountableness, and the glorious destinies of the immortal soul?
William Ellery Channing
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Government, the peace-officer at home, breathes war abroad, organizes it into a science, reduces it to a system, makes it a trade, and applauds it as if it were the most honorable work of nations.
William Ellery Channing
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Science and art may invent splendid modes of illuminating the apartments of the opulent; but these are all poor and worthless compared with the common light which the sun sends into all our windows, which he pours freely, impartially over hill and valley, which kindles daily the eastern and western sky; and so the common lights of reason, and conscience, and love, are of more worth and dignity than the rare endowments which give celebrity to a few.
William Ellery Channing
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The mind, in proportion as it is cut off from free communication with nature, with revelation, with God, with itself, loses its life, just as the body droops when debarred from the air and the cheering light from heaven.
William Ellery Channing
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Other sages have spoken to me of God. But from whom could I have learned the essence of Divine perfection, as from Him, who was in a peculiar sense the Son, representative, and image of God — who was especially an incarnation of the unbounded love of the Father? And from what other teacher could I have learned to approach the Supreme Being with that filial spirit, which forms the happiness of my fellowship with Him? From other seers I might have heard of heaven; but when I behold in Jesus the spirit of heaven, dwelling actually on earth, what a new comprehension have I of that better world!
William Ellery Channing
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I call that mind free which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man master, which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, which opens itself to light whencesoever it may come, which receives new truth as an angel from Heaven.
William Ellery Channing
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He who cannot see a brother, a child of God, a man possessing all the rights of humanity, under a skin darker than his own, wants the vision of a Christian. He worships the Outward. The spirit is not yet revealed to him. To look unmoved on the degradation and wrongs of a fellow-creature, because burned by a fiercer sun, proves us strangers to justice and love, in those universal forms which characterize Christianity.
William Ellery Channing
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Every human being has a work to carry on within, duties to perform abroad, influence to exert, which are peculiarly his, and which no conscience but his own can teach.
William Ellery Channing
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No power in society, no hardship in your condition can depress you, keep you down, in knowledge, power, virtue, influence, but by your own consent.
William Ellery Channing
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We do, then, with all earnestness, though without reproaching our brethren, protest against the irrational and unscriptural doctrine of the Trinity. "To us," as to the Apostle and the primitive Christians, "there is one God, even the Father." With Jesus, we worship the Father, as the only living and true God. We are astonished, that any man can read the New Testament, and avoid the conviction, that the Father alone is God.
William Ellery Channing
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A genuine, enlightened patriot discerns, that the welfare of his own country is involved in the general progress of society; and, in the character of a patriot, as well as of a Christian, he rejoices in the liberty and prosperity of other communities, and is anxious to maintain with them the relations of peace and amity.
William Ellery Channing
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Whatever you may suffer, speak the truth. Be worthy of the entire confidence of your associates. Consider what is right as to what must be done. It is not necessary that you should keep your property, or even your life, but it is necessary that you should hold fast your integrity.
William Ellery Channing
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The greatest truths are wronged if not linked with beauty, and they win their way most surely and deeply into the soul when arrayed in this their natural and fit attire.
William Ellery Channing
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No other fame can be compared with that of Jesus. He has a place in the human heart, that no one who ever lived has in any measure rivaled. No name is pronounced with a tone of such love and veneration. All other laurels wither before His. His are ever kept fresh with tears of gratitude.
William Ellery Channing
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Every mind was made for growth, for knowledge; and its nature is sinned against when it is doomed to ignorance.
William Ellery Channing
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The world is to be carried forward by truth, which at first offends, which wins its way by degrees, which the many hate and would rejoice to crush.
William Ellery Channing
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War is to be ranked among the most dreadful calamities which fall on a guilty world; and, what deserves consideration, it tends to multiply and perpetuate itself without end. It feeds and grows on the blood which it sheds. The passions, from which it springs, gain strength and fury from indulgence.
William Ellery Channing
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Every human being is intended to have a character of his own; to be what no others are, and to do what no other can do.
William Ellery Channing
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The best books for a man are not always those which the wise recommend, but often those which meet the peculiar wants, the natural thirst of his mind, and therefore awaken interest and rivet thought.
William Ellery Channing
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God deliver us all from prejudice and unkindness, and fill us with the love of truth and virtue.
William Ellery Channing
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One anecdote of a man is worth a volume of biography.
William Ellery Channing
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Quote of the day
Be a sinner and sin strongly, but more strongly have faith and rejoice in Christ.
Martin Luther
William Ellery Channing
Creative Commons
Born:
April 7, 1780
Died:
October 2, 1842
(aged 62)
Bio:
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.
Known for:
My Symphony
Unitarian Christianity and other essays
The Works of William E. Channing (1840)
Discourses On War
Most used words:
god
human
man
nature
love
mind
spirit
truth
soul
life
intellectual
war
power
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