Reminiscences of Rev. Wm. Ellery Channing, D. D.

Preface

1\ VTY simple object in these Keminiscences has been to make a clean script of the impression Dr. Channing made on my mind in the years between 1816 and 1842; for ho seemed to me a fixed centre, around which was much revolution of thought in Massachusetts. Of course, the image suffers from the inadequate mirror whose inequalities of surface distort it more or less. But whatever may seem not self-consistent must be referred to my want of comprehension. If I have succeeded in bringing the living, breathing, suffering, and rejoicing man whom I knew to the common heart, so that my readers shall go to his own printed pages with minds awakened to the practical meaning with which every sentence is loaded, I shall be satisfied. I have hoped to do so by opening the door to his private every-day life, and by giving some idea of his weekly sermons. The diamond finish of what he elaborated for the press leaves the mind of the reader, perhaps, comparatively idle in an aesthetic delight, instead of suggesting trains of thought to be carried out by his own efforts.

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PREFACE.

It has annoyed me to hear so much, lately, of Dr. Channing's being " out grown " by younger thinkers, whose cursory reading of his Works, without any knowledge of his individuality, has prevented them from seeing that he had "a thought beyond other men's thought/' as was well said of him in his lifetime by one of his most intimate friends.

Just as I was closing my last chapter, there came to my hand the book entitled " Swedenborg and Channing," published, as it seems, two years ago by Mr. B. F. Barrett, of Germantown, Penn. I have read it through with great delight. It consists of parallel passages from Swedenborg's and Dr. Channing's Works, on sixty-seven most important points of Theology, Pneumatology, and Christology, in which the identity of the thought amounts to proof of their profound verity ; since it is well known to many — and I know certainly — that Dr. Channing was never a reader of Swedenborg at all, and that he had a method of arriving at truth entirely different from that which Swedenborg professes. The passages quoted seem to me the very best to be found in the Works of either of these great seers, and are calculated to make the readers of each go with great interest to the pages of the other. I would earnestly recommend every one interested in Dr. Channing to read it. To those who literally believe that Swedenborg had personal communication with the angels, or with departed spirits who inhabit other mansions of the Father s house than this material body, it will be of course

PREFACE.

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Divine endorsement of Dr. Channing's views. There might have been other parallel passages, had the sermon of Dr. Channing been published to which I refer on page 300.

But there is one subject on which Dr. Channing had a thought beyond Swedenborg's revelations. Profoundly as he felt the solemn reality of future retribution, he did not believe in any creature being everlastingly punished ; because he believed no evil or sin of a finite will could hold out forever against the grace of infinite love. I have heard him say this, a great many times.

E. P. P.

Concord, Mass., March, 1880.

REMINISCENCES OF DR. CHANNING.