CHANNING, WILLIAM ELLERY(178o-184 2) , can divine and philanthropist, was born in Newport (R.I.), April 7, 1780. Channing seemed to have inherited from his father sweetness of temper and warmth of affection, and from his mother that strong moral discernment and straightforward rectitude of purpose and action which formed striking features of his char acter. He prepared for college in New London under the care of his uncle, the Rev. Henry Channing, to this period tracing the beginning of his spiritual life, and in 1794 entered Harvard college. In his college vacations he taught at Lancaster (Mass.), and in term time he stinted himself in food to save time for study—an experiment which produced acute dyspepsia. Never theless, he felt that he got little good from his college course.
After graduating in 1798, he lived at Richmond as tutor in the family of David Meade Randolph, U.S. marshal for Virginia. He returned "a thin and pallid invalid," to spend a year and a half in Newport, which had always 'delighted him by its beauty, and in 1802 went to Cambridge as regent (or general proctor) in Har vard; in the autumn of 1802 he began to preach. On June 1, 1803, he was ordained pastor of the Federal street Congregational church in Boston. He did not become known as "the apostle of Unitari anism" until after his sermon preached at the ordination of the Rev. Jared Sparks in 1819 and the publication of his articles in The Christian Disciple, "Objections to Unitarian Christianity Con sidered" and "The Moral Argument against Calvinism." He took a keen interest in all public questions; and in 1816 he preached a sermon on war which led to the organization of the Massachu setts peace society. His sermon on "Religion, a Social Principle," helped to procure the omission from the state constitution of the third article of Part I., which made compulsory a tax for the support of religious worship. In Aug. 1 821 he undertook a journey abroad, where he met many distinguished men of letters, including Wordsworth and Coleridge; the latter wrote of him, "He has the love of wisdom and the wisdom of love." As a result of a visit to the West Indies he began to write his book Slavery (1835), in which he asserted that "man cannot be justly held and used as property"; that the tendency of slavery is morally, intellectually, and domestically bad ; that emancipa tion, however, should not be forced on slave-holders by govern mental interference, but by an enlightened public conscience. He declined to identify himself with the abolitionists, whose motto was "Immediate Emancipation" and whose passionate agitation he thought unsuited to the work they were attempting. In 1837 he published Thoughts on the Evils of a Spirit of Conquest, and on Slavery: A Letter on the Annexation of Texas to the United States, addressed to Henry Clay—arguing that the Texan revolt from Mexican rule was largely the work of land-speculators, and of those who resolved "to throw Texas open to slave-holders and slaves"—and warning of its serious consequences. Channing's pamphlet Emancipation (1840) dealt with the success of eman cipation in the West Indies, as related in Joseph John Gurney's Familiar Letters to Henry Clay of Kentucky (1840). In 1842 he published The Duty of the Free States; or Remarks Suggested by the Case of the Creole, a careful analysis of the letter of com plaint from the American to the British government, and a de fence of the position taken by the British government. On Aug. I, 1842, he delivered at Lenox (Mass.) an address celebrating the anniversary of emancipation in the British West Indies. Two months later, Oct. 2, 1842, he died at Bennington, Vermont.
Physically, Channing was short and slight ; his eyes were un naturally large ; his voice wonderfully clear. He was not a great pastor, and lacked social tact, but by the few who knew him well he was almost worshipped. His sermons were noted for their rare simplicity and gracefulness of style. To the name "Unitarian" Channing objected strongly, thinking "unity" as abstract a word as "trinity" and as little expressing the close fatherly relation of God to man. It is to be noted that he strongly objected to the growth of "Unitarian orthodoxy" and its increasing narrowness. Channing believed in historic Christianity and in the story of the resurrection, "a fact which comes to me with a certainty I find in few ancient histories," although he held that the Scriptures were not inspired but merely records of inspiration. In the con troversies into which he was forced he continually displayed the greatest breadth and catholicity of view. The differences in New England churches he considered were largely verbal, and he said that "would Trinitarians tell us what they mean, their system would generally be found little else than a mystical form of the Unitarian doctrine." His opposition to Calvinism was so great, however, that even in 1812 he declared "existence a curse" if Calvinism be true. Possibly his boldest and most elaborate de fence of Unitarianism was his sermon on Unitarianism most fa vourable to Piety, preached in 1826, and the election sermon of 183o was his greatest plea for spiritual and intellectual freedom.
Channing's reputation as an author was probably based largely on his publication in The Christian Examiner of Remarks on the Character and Writings of John Milton (1826), Remarks on the Life and Character of Napoleon Bonaparte (1827-28), and an Essay on the Character and Writings of Fenelon (1829). An Essay on Self-Culture introduced Franklin lectures delivered in Boston in 1838. Channing was an intimate friend of Horace Mann, and his views on the education of children are stated by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody to have anticipated those of Froebel. His Com plete Works have appeared in various editions since 1841.
See the Memoir by W. H. Channing (1848) ; Elizabeth P. Peabody, Reminiscences of the Rev. William Ellery Channing, D.D. (188o) , in timate but inexact; J. W. Chadwick, William Ellery Channing, Minis ter of Religion (1903) ; W. M. Salter, "Channing as a Social Re former," Unitarian Review (March 1888) ; and C. W. Eliot, Four American Leaders (1906).