DISCOURSES,

                   REVIEWS, AND MISCELLANIES,



                               BY 

                     WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING





                          _____________


                             BOSTON

                 PUBLISHED BY CARTER AND HENDEE

                            MDCCCXXX.
[II]
[III]
                            CONTENTS

                               ___

Preface                                                     v


[v]
                             PREFACE

     The present volume, is, with the exception of one discourse,
a republication of various tracts, which were called forth by
particular occasions, and which were never intended to appear in
their present form. --The reader cannot be more aware than I am,
that they need many and great changes; but they would probably
have never been republished, had I waited for leisure to conform
them to my ideas of what they should be, or to make them more
worthy of the unexpected favor which they have received.  The
articles, in general, were intended to meet the wants of the
times when they were written, and to place what I deem great
truths, within reach of the multitude of men.  If the reader will
bear in mind this design, some defects will more readily be
excused.  The second review, in particular, should be referred to
the date of its original publication.

     Certain tracts, which drew a degree of attention on their
first appearance, have been excluded from this volume.  My
reasons for so doing are various.  Some have been omitted,
because they seem to me of little or no worth; some, because they
do not express sufficiently my present view; and some, because
they owed their interest to events, which have faded more or less
from the public mind.  In their present form, I wish none of them
to be found in a collection of my writings.

     I esteem it a privilege, that my writings have called forth
many strictures, and been subjected to an unsparing criticism.  I
know that in some things I must have erred. I cannot hope, that
even in my most successful efforts, I have done full justice to
any great truth.  Deeply conscious of my fallibleness, I wish
none of my [vi] opinions to be taken on trust, nor would I screen
any from the most rigorous examination.  If my opponents have
exposed my errors, I owe them a great debt; and should I fail,
through the force of prejudice, to see and acknowledge my
obligation to them in life, I hope to do so in the future world.

     I have declined answering the attacks made on my writings,
not from contempt of my opponents, among whom are men of
distinguished ability and acknowledged virtue, but because I
believed that I should to myself and others more good, by seeking
higher and wider views, than be defending what I had already
offered.  I feared that my mind might become stationary by
lingering round my own writings.  I never doubted, that if
anything in these were worthy to live, it would survive all
assaults, and I was not anxious to uphold for a moment, what was
doomed, by its want of vital energy, to pass away.

     There is one charge, to which, it may be thought, that I
ought to have replied, --the charge of misrepresenting the
opinions of my opponents.  When I considered, however, that in so
doing, I should involve myself in personal controversy, the worst
of all controversies, I thought myself bound to refrain.  Had I
entered on this discussion, I must have spoken with great
freedom, and should have caused great exasperation.  I must have
set down as a grave moral offence, the disingenuousness so common
at the present day, which, under pretence of maintaining old
opinions, so disguises and discolors them, that they can with
difficult be recognized.  I must have thrown back the charge of
misrepresentation, and shown how unfairly I was reproached with
ascribing to my adversaries opinions, which I supposed them to
reject, and which I only affirmed to be necessarily involved in
their acknowledged doctrines.  I must have met the quotations
from their standard authors, which were arrayed against me, by
showing, that these were examples of the self-contradiction, or
inconsistency, which is inseparable from error.  What kind of
controversy would have grown out of such a reply, can easily be
conjectured.  I certainly did not think, that, by provoking it, I
should aid the cause of good morals or good manners, of piety or
peace.  That I have never been unjust to those who differ from
me, I dare not say; for in this particular, better men than
myself often err.  Perhaps, too, I ought to apprehend, that I
have sometimes wanted due deference to the feelings of those,
whose opinions I have called in question; for I have been loudly
reproached with the want of christian tenderness.  I can only
say, and here I speak confidently, that I have written nothing in
anger, or unkindness; and I now retain the strong language which
has given offence, only because it seems to me to be demanded by
the greatness of the truths which I defend, and of the errors
which I oppose.

     It is due to myself to say, that the controversial character
of apart of this volume, is to be ascribed, not to the love of
disputation, but to the circumstances in which I was called to
write.  I was my lot to enter on public life at a time when this
part of the country was visited, by what I esteem one of its
sorest scourges; I mean, by a revival of the spirit of
intolerance and persecution.  I saw the commencement of those
systematic efforts, which have been since developed, for
fastening on the community a particular creed.  Opinions, which I
thought true and purifying, were not only assailed as errors, but
branded as crimes.  Then began, what seems to me one of the gross
immoralities of our times, the practice of aspersing the
characters of exemplary men, on the ground of differences of
opinion as to the most mysterious articles of faith.  Then began
those assaults on freedom of though and speech, which, had they
succeeded, would have left us only the name of religious liberty. 
Then it grew perilous to search the scriptures for ourselves, and
to speak freely according to the convictions of our own minds.  I
saw that penalties, as serious in this country as fine and
imprisonment, were, if possible, to be attached to the profession
of liberal views of Christianity, the penalties of general hatred
and scorn; and that a degrading uniformity of opinion was to be
imposed by the severest persecution, which the spirit of the age
would allow.  At such a period, I dared not be silent.  To oppose
what I deemed error was to me a secondary consideration of
opinion.  My first duty, as I believed, was, to maintain
practically and resolutely the rights of the human mind; to live
and to suffer, if to suffer were necessary, for that intellectual
and religious liberty, which I prize incomparably more than my
civil rights.  I felt myself called, not merely to plead in
general for freedom of thought and speech, but, what was more
important and trying, to assert this freedom by action.  I should
have felt myself disloyal to truth and freedom, had I confined
myself to vague commonplaces about our rights, and forborne to
bear my testimony expressly and specially to proscribed and
persecuted opinions.  The times required that a voice of strength
and courage should be lifted [viii] up, and I rejoice, that I was
found among those by whom it was uttered and sent far and wide. 
The timid, sensitive, diffident and doubting, needed this voice;
and without it, would have been overborne by the clamor of
intolerance.  If in any respect I have rendered a service to
humanity and religion, which may deserve to be remembered, when I
shall be taken away, it is in this.  I believe, that had not he
spirit of religious tyranny been met, as it was, by unyielding
opposition in the region, it would have fastened an iron yoke on
the necks of the people.  The cause of religious freedom owes its
present strength to nothing so much, as to the constancy and
resolution of its friends in this quarter.  Here its chief battle
has been fought, and not fought in vain.  The spirit of
intolerance is not indeed crushed; but its tones are subdued, and
its menaces impotent, compared with what they would have been,
had it prospered in its efforts here.

     The remarks, now offered, have been intended to meet the
objection which may be made to this volume, of being too
controversial.  Other objections may be urged against it.  Very
possibly it may seem to want perfect consistency.  I have long
been conscious, that we are more in danger of being enslaved to
our own opinions, especially to such as we have expressed and
defended, than to those of any other person; and I have
accordingly desired to write without any reference to my previous
publications, or without any anxiety to accommodate my present to
my past views.  In treatises, prepared in this spirit and at
distant intervals, some incongruity of thought or feeling can
hardly fail to occur.

     By some, an opposite objection may be urged, that the volume
has too much repetition.  This could not well be avoided in
articles written on similar topics or occasions; written, too,
without any references to each other, and in the expectation that
each would be read by many, into whose hands the others would not
probably fall.  I must add, that my interest in certain great
truths, has made me anxious to avail myself of every opportunity
to enforce them; nor do I feel as if they were urged more
frequently, than their importance demands.

     I ought not to close this Preface, without expressing my
obligation to two of my most valued friends, the Rev. Dr.
Tuckerman of Boston, and professor Norton, of Cambridge, without
whose solicitations and encouragements, I might have wanted
confidence, under the lassitude of feeble health, to attempt the
little which I have done for the cause of religion and freedom.

     I will only add, that whilst I attach no great value to
these articles, I still should not have submitted to the labour
of partially revising them, did I not believe, that they set
forth some great truths, which, if carried out and enforced by
more gifted minds, may do much for human improvement.  If, by
anything which I have written, I may be an instrument of
directing such minds more seriously to the claims and true
greatness of our nature, I shall be most grateful to God.  This
subject deserves and will sooner or later engage the profoundest
meditations of wise and good men.  I have done for it what I
could; but when I think of its grandeur and importance, I
earnestly desire and anticipate for it more worthy advocates.  In
truth, I shall see with no emotion but joy these fugitive
productions forgotten and lost in the superior brightness of
writings consecrated to the work of awakening in the human should
a consciousness of its divine and immortal powers.

                             W.E.C.

Boston, April, 1830