William Henry Channing
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William Henry Channing (May 25, 1810 - December 23, 1884) was an American Unitarian clergyman, writer and philosopher.
William Henry Channing was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Channing's father died when he was an infant, and responsibility for the young man's education was assumed by his uncle, William Ellery Channing, the pre-eminent Unitarian theologian of the early nineteenth century. The younger William graduated from Harvard College in 1829 and from Harvard Divinity School in 1833. He was ordained and installed over the Unitarian church in Cincinnati in 1835. After filling several pastorates in the United States, he succeeded (1857) James Martineau as minister of the Hope Street Unitarian Chapel, Liverpool, England. At the commencement of the American Civil War he returned (1862) and took charge of the Unitarian church in Washington, D. C. He was one of the early supporters of the socialistic movement in this country and was editor of the Present and the Harbinger. In 1848 he presided over The Religious Union of Associationists in Boston, a socialist group which included many members of the Brook Farm commune. William Henry Channing, along with the younger Ellery Channing, was a Transcendentalist. He was a prolific writer, contributing to the North American Review, the Dial, the Christian Examiner, and other serials, a member of the Transcendental Club, and corresponded with Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Among his inspirational writings, one piece, his "Symphony", is well-known:
- To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common -- this is my symphony.
Channing was, in 1863 and 1864, the Chaplain of the United States House of Representatives. He died in London.
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[edit] Larger works
- A translation of Jouffroy's Ethics (1840)
- Memoir of [his uncle] William Ellery Channing (three volumes, 1848)
- Memoir of [his cousin] the Rev. James H. Perkins (1851)
- Memoir of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (in conjunction with Emerson and J. F. Clarke (1852)
[edit] Literature
- For his Life consult O. B. Frothingham (Boston, 1886)
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- William Henry Channing from the Transcendentalism Web
- Entry in "The American Cyclopaedia" edited by George Ripley, Charles A. (Charles Anderson) Dana; D. Appleton and company; Google Books
- This article incorporates text from an edition of the New International Encyclopedia that is in the public domain.
