the stones and trees were ordained his colleagues to preach with him, obedient to his Orphic enchantment;-not that genius which reaches up to the heavens, pressing sun and moon and each particular star into the service of his thought; which proves by a diagram, illustrates by a picture, making the unwilling listeners feel that he had bribed the universe to plead his cause ;-not that rare poetic power, which is born Genius and bred Art, which teems with sentiments and ideas, clothes and adorns them with language gathered from letters, nature, art, and common life, grouping his family of thoughts as Raphael in a picture paints the Madonna, Joseph, Baby, Ass, Angel, Palm-tree, those incongruous things of earth and Heaven, all unified and made harmonious by that one enchanting soul. He had not that intellectual, wealthy eloquence, beautiful as roses yet strong as steel. Nor had he the homely force of Luther, who in the language of the farm, the shop, the boat, the street, or nursery, told the high truths that reason or religion taught, and took possession of his audience by a storm of speech, then poured upon them all the riches of his brave plebeian soul, baptizing every head anew—a man who with the people seemed more mob than they, and when with kings the most imperial man. He had not the blunt terse style of Latimer, nor his beautiful homeliness of speech, which is more attractive than all rhetoric. He had not the cool clear. analysis of Dr Barrow, his prodigious learning, his close logic, his masculine sense; nor the graceful imagery, the unbounded imagination of Jeremy Taylor, "the Shakspeare of divines," nor his winsome way of talk about piety, elevating the commonest events of life to classic dignity. He had not the hard-headed intellect of Dr South, his skilful analysis, his conquering wit, his intellectual wealth :-no, he had not the power of condensing his thoughts into the energetic language of Websternever a word wrong or too much—or of marshalling his forces in such magnificently stern array; no, he had not the exquisite rhythmic speech of Emerson, that wonderful artist in words, who unites manly strength with the rare beauty of a woman's mind.

His eminence came from no such gifts or graces. His power came mainly from the predominating strength of the moral and religious element in him. He loved God with

his mind, his conscience, his affections, and his soul. He had goodness and piety, both in the heroic degree. His intellectual power seemed little, not when compared with that of other men, but when measured by his own religious power. Loving man and God, he loved truth and justice. He would not exaggerate; he would not undervalue what he saw and knew-so was not violent, was not carried away by his subject. He was commonly his own master. He said nothing for effect; he never flattered the prejudice of his audience; respecting them, he put his high thought into simple speech, caught their attention, and gradually drew them up to his own elevation.

He was ruled by conscience to a remarkable degree; almost demonized by conscience-for during a part of his life the moral element seems despotic, ruling at the expense of intellect and of natural joy. But that period passed by, and her rule became peaceful and harmonious. He loved nature, the sea, the sky, and found new charms in the sweet face of earth and heaven as the years went by him, all his life. He had a keen sense of beauty-beauty in nature, in art, in speech, in manners, in man and woman's face. He loved science, he loved letters, and he loved art; but all of these affections were overmastered by his love of man and God,-means to that end, or little flowers that bordered the pathway where goodness and piety walked hand in hand. This supremacy of the moral and religious element was the secret of his strength, and it gave him a peculiar power over men, one which neither Luther nor Latimer ever had,-no, nor Barrow, nor Taylor, nor South, nor Webster, nor Emerson.

He had a large talent for religion, and so was fitted to become an exponent of the higher aspirations of mankind in his day and in times to come. He asked for truth, for religion. He was always a seeker, his whole life" a process of conversion." Timid and self-distrustful, slow of inquiry and cautious to a fault, always calculating the effect before fraternizing with a cause, he had the most unflinching confidence in justice and in truth,-in man's power to perceive and receive both.

Loving man and God, he loved freedom in all its legitimate forms, and so became a champion in all the combats of the day where rights were called in question. He hated VOL. X.-Critical Writings, 2.

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the chains of old bondage, and moved early in the Unitarian Reformation; but when the Unitarian party became a sect, and narrow like the rest-when it also came to stand in the way of mankind, he became "little of a Unitarian," and cared no more for that sect than for the Trinitarians. He could not be blind to the existence of religion in all sects, and did not quarrel with other men's goodness and piety, because he could not accept their theology. He was not born or bred for à sectarian; such as were he did not hate, but pity. He engaged in the various reforms of the day, he laboured for the cause of peace, for temperance, for the improvement of prisons, for the abolition of imprisonment for debt, for education; for the general welfare of men by elevating the most exposed classes of society. He was an eminent advocate for the abolition of slavery.

We do not mean to say that he committed no errors, that he never faltered. He had his imperfections and weaknesses, which we shall presently consider; sometimes he was over-timid, and seems to have allowed meaner men to prevail over him with their counsels, their littleness, and their fears. A sick body often enfeebled his mind and sometimes his courage. So he never stood in the foremost rank of any reform, speculative or practical. This is partly owing to the causes just hinted at; in part, also, to his want of originality.

He was, we think, the fairest model of a good minister known to the public or his age. He preached what he knew and he lived what he preached. He had a profound confidence in God; not in God merely as an abstraction— the abstract power, wisdom, and love, but as that abstraction becomes concrete through Providence, and reveals itself in the course of nature, men, nations, and the world. He had also, and accordingly, a profound respect for man and profound confidence in man; not for great men, rich men, and cultivated men alone, but for man as man, for all men: he did not despise the proud, the ignorant, the wicked. He had a deep reverence for God and for man; this gave him eloquence when he spoke-gave him his name amongst men, and gave him his power.

A good deal of his earlier preaching, it is said, related to abstract matters-to ideas, to sentiments, to modes of

mind. Men complained that he did not touch the ground. He spoke of God, of the soul, the dignity of human nature; of love to God, to men; of justice, charity, of freedom, and holiness of heart; he spoke of sin, of fear, of alienation from God. Years ago we remember to have heard murmurs at his abstract style of thought and speech-it went over men's heads, said some. But his abstractions he translated into the most concrete forms. Respect for God became obedience to His laws; faith in God was faith in keeping them; human nature was so great and so dignified, the very noblest work of God, and therefore society must respect that dignity and conform to that nature: there must be no intemperance-and men who grow rich by poisoning their brothers must renounce their wicked craft; there must be no war, for its glory is human shame, and its soldiers only butchers of men; there must be education for all-for human nature is a thing too divine for men to leave in ignorance, and therefore in vice, and crime, and sin; there must be no pauperism, no want but society must be so reconstructed that Christianity becomes a fact, and there are no idle men who steal their living out of the world, none overburdened with excessive toil, no riot, no waste, no idleness, and so no want; there must be no oppression of class by class-but the strong are to help the weak, the educated to instruct the rude; there must be no slavery for that is the consummation of all wrongs against the dignity of human nature. So his word became incarnate, and the most abstract preacher in the land, the most mystical in his piety, and, as it seemed at first, the furthest removed from practice, comes down to actual sins and toils for human needs.

Then came the same grumblers, murmuring to another tune, and said "When Dr Channing used to preach about God and the soul, about holiness and sin, we liked himthat was Christianity. But now he is always insisting on some reform; talking about intemperance, and war, and slavery, or telling us that we must remove the evils of society and educate all men: we wish Dr Channing would preach the Gospel." Thus reasoned men, for their foolish hearts were darkened. The old spirit of bondage opposed him when with other good men he asked of Calvinism"Give us freedom, that we may go in and out before the

Lord, and find truth." But the new spirit of bondage opposed him just as much when he came up with others, and asked for the same thing. Each reform he engaged in got him new foes. The Tories of the Church hated himbecause he asked for more truth; the Tories of the State hated him—because he asked for more justice; the Tories of society hated him-because in the name of man and God he demanded more love! Yet he silently prevailed -against all these; new truth, new justice, new love, came into the Churches, into the State, into society, and now those very Tories think him an honour to all threeand claim him as their friend! Such is the mystery of truth!

We have just said he never stood in the van of any reform-his lack of originality, his feeble health, his consequent caution and timidity, hindering him from that: yet there was scarcely a good work or a liberal thought in his time, coming within his range, which he did not aid, and powerfully aid. True, he commonly came late, but he always came and he never went back. He was one of the leaders of new thought in the new world and the old.

How strange is the progress of men on their march through time—a democracy! how few are the leaders! So a caravan passes slowly on in the Arabian wilderness-the men and the women, the asses and the camels. There is dust, and noise, and heat, the scream of the camels and the asses' bray, the shouts of the drivers, the songs of the men, the prattle of the women, the repinings and the gossip, the brawls and the day-dreams, the incongruous murmur of a great multitude. There are stragglers in front, in flank, in rear. But there are always some who know the landmarks by day, the sky-marks by night, the special providence of the pilgrimage, who direct the march, giving little heed to the brawls or the gossips, the scream, or the bray, or the song. They lift up a censer, which all day long sends up its column of smoke, and all the night its fiery pillar, to guide the promiscuous pilgrimage.

The work before us is well named "Memoirs" of Dr Channing. It is not a life-it is almost wholly autobiographical; we learn, however, from the book, a few facts relating to his life not related by himself. It appears, that