People's Edition of the Entire Works of W. E. Channing

AMONG the many and inestimable blessings of Christianity, I regard, as not the least, the new sentiment with which it teaches man to look upon his fellow-beings; the new interest which it awakens in us towards everything human; the new importance which it gives to the soul; the new relation which it establishes between man and man. In this respect, it began a mighty revolution, which has been silently spreading itself through society, and which, I believe, is not to stop, until new ties shall have taken place of those which have hitherto, in the main, connected the human race. Christianity has as yet but begun its work of reformation. Under its influences, a new order of society is advancing, surely though slowly; and this beneficent change it is to accomplish in no small measure by revealing to men their own nature, and teaching them to "honour all" who partake it.

As yet Christianity has done little, compared with what it is to do, in establishing the true bond of union between man and man. The old bonds of society still continue in a great degree. They are instinct, interest, force. The true tie, which is mutual respect, calling forth mutual, growing, never-failing acts of love, is as yet little known. new revelation, if I may so speak, remains to be made; or rather, the truths of the old revelation in regard to the greatness of human nature, are to be brought out from obscurity and neglect. The soul is to be regarded with religious reverence, hitherto unfelt; and the solemn claims of every being to whom this divine principle is imparted, are to be established on the ruins of those pernicious principles, both in church and state, which have so long divided mankind into the classes of the abject Many and the self-exalting Few.

There is nothing of which men know so little, as themselves. They understand incomparably more of the surrounding creation, of matter, and of its laws, than of that spiritual principle, to which matter was made to be the minister, and without which the outward universe would be worthless. Of course, no man can be wholly a stranger to the soul, for the soul is himself, and he cannot but be conscious of its most obvious workings. But it is to most a chaos, a region shrouded in ever-shifting mists, baffling the eye and bewildering the imagination. The affinity of the mind with God, its moral power, the purposes for which its faculties were bestowed, its connexion with futurity, and the dependence of its whole happiness on its own right action and progress, -these truths, though they might be expected to absorb us, are to most

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People's Edition of the Entire Works of W. E. Channing, Volumen2