A SEEKER AFTER TRUTH:•
"Timex are flowery components, Sir, in the language of my friend," was Colonel Diver's criticism of Mr. Jefferson Brick ; and it may be applied with emphasis to Mr. Octavian Brooks Frothinglaam. His style is only too literary, painfully eloquent ; never for an instant easy, quiet, or unambitious. He has not a ray of humour, has very little notion of itioidus ordo, and is an uncompromising devotee of the Websterian orthography. It will thus be seen that, if this biography is interesting or readable, it is no fault of the biographer. Yet it is both ; and what makes it each is the singular and unique personality of the hero. The book records the ideals, the yearnings, the inward and outward straggles, the hopes, the disappointmentv, and, as the world judges, the failure, of a pare and gentle enthusiast, born out of due time.
William Henry Channing, a nephew of the eminent Dr. Channing, was born at Boston in 1810. He died in London in 1884. His whole life, divided between England and America, was devoted to the task of reconciling spiritual religion with the social wants of modern humanity. To this end he gave every energy, physical and mental, of sixty years ; in its pursuit he questioned every Church, creed, and religious system, and even created some fresh ones of his own. He attracted the affection and the trust of many and diverse minds. He put his hand to countless enterprises, and scarcely one of them succeeded. He lived and died without advancing, as far as man can see, one step towards the realisation of hie high ideal; and yet he went down to the grave fall of faith and hope, and fully expecting the swift and certain triumph of the cause in which he believed. Mr. Channing was brought up under the shadow of his great uncle's influence, and early devoted to the Unitarian ministry. Yet from the first he was full of misgivings. His social sympathies were wide and intense; he loved personal and political freedom, he mistrusted dogma, he believed chiefly in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, and he longed for a theology which should convert those ideals into tangible realities. In 1833, he began preaching in Boston, but felt un- certain about his vocation, and even about the truth of the creed which he had to preach. Next year he had all but resolved to abandon the ministerial career ; but two deaths in his immediate circle reanimated him to " imitate their example; try to make myself and others fit to join them and the innumerable hosts of immortals." With this view he accepted a minis- terial post in Pennsylvania, and for a time edited a Unitarian newspaper, which died two years after he took it in hand. About this period his views became clearer, and, in consequence, his life happier. He believed in Christ as" an elder brother, the per- fection of humanity," and tried to naturalise and unsystematise the theology of St. Paul somewhat in the manner pursued by Mr. Matthew Arnold. Bat, after three months' sojourn at his post, his old doubts returned, and he threw up the work. He became engaged to an Episcopalian lady, and he set out on a journey through Europe. He attended, and apparently was bored by, the Unitarian Conference at Geneva ; but was greatly stimulated and delighted by his first contact with spiritual art in the churches and picture galleries of Italy. The aesthetic sense was awakened. He appreciated the outward splendour of the Roman polity ; but neither then nor at any later time could he submit himself to the intellectual discipline which Rome imposes on her children. In England, he made few important acquaintances; failed to see Wordsworth, but met and enjoyed the Carlyles. Portraits of that strange couple are always welcome :- "Mr. C., though a very agreeable and interesting man, is plain, almost to rudeness, in his manners. This is not quite correct, either ; for he has all the politeness that native kindness and benevolence gives, but there is little polish about him, and I should have supposed he had seen very little of society. I therefore inferred, rather hastily, that his wife must be somewhat homely, perhaps rustic, though I was prepared to like her from her note to me. We found • /Lenoir of William Henn, m unnins. By Oetarim Brooks Frothiugham. London: Swan Sonnenschein, Lowrey, and Os, 1887. her, on the contrary, very ladylike in her looks and manners, and perfectly lovely from the union of great intelligence and perfect aimplicity. I have warmly ever met a more attractive woman. She is very highly cultivated, too, understands a number of languages, and speaks both French and Italian fluently. They have no children, and have both delicate health, but, I should think, were as happy as people can possibly be under these circumstances."
From England Charming returned to America, and was married. He now hoped to be "less haunted by blue-devils;' but stall he writes, " Self-satisfaction, or rather an easy con-
science, I never yet enjoyed Perhaps I have by nature a self-tormenting disposition."
From his earliest days he had longed to see religion applied to the amelioration of the social condition of the poor ; "he was persuaded that Unitarianism should present its humane side to the public ;" he believed that there was a great opening for this enterprise in New York, and that "new views respecting God, Christ, man, would command instant acceptance." To. New York, therefore, he went at the end of 1836. He found the ground fully occupied by the orthodox denominations, and opened a free church. This was to appeal specially to the poor and the artisans ; it was to be anseetarian, humane,and a centre of philanthropy. It opened in 1837 with a congregration of ten, " increased to twenty, including those who went out He now began to preach extempore, and preached immeasarablyabove the heads of his hearers. Financial troubles gathered, and the failure was complete. In August he quitted the work, and undertook temporary duty at Cincinnati. Here he was at home. There was little dogma, great intellectual life, enthusiasm for social reform, and a strong feeling in favour of Abolition. The temporary engagement was exchanged for a permanent one, and Charming undertook the charge of a Unitarian church. But soon his reli- gious opinions underwent a change. He came to the conclusion that Christ was not, even in the restricted sense of the Uni- tarians, the Son of God. "The Gospels were unreliable as history. Christianity was not a divine institution. There was no revelation from Heaven." At the end of three years he left Cincinnati, and this was the end of his strictly Unitarian ministry. There now came a period of extreme freethaught, not clearly distinguishable from pure negation. But soon after, he announced himself converted to a new religion, with God as the Universal Father, Christ the perfect man, and social union and service the visible Kingdom of God on earth. In 184t2, Chauning began to preach his new faith at Brooklyn, and thence he moved to New York. Here he gathered a congregation round him, and formulated, in a statement intolerably diffuse, allegorical, and nebulous, "the principles of Christian Union." The most intelligible sentence is this : " We have no creed." Bat in 1846 he left New York, and was for a time connected with the socialistic experiment at Brook Farm ; but here his ministry was cut short "by the active agency of a few " of his hearers. We have seen that Channing was always keenly interested in Socialism. He used to quote St. Simon, Lamennais, Fourier, and Swedenborg. His recognition of the equal rights of man was so practical that he permitted any one who chose to hold forth at his Sunday evening meetings. " People whose passion for talking was in excess of their thoughts or their consideration for others, deluged the audience with words. At one time ship carpenter took up the parable. At another, a black woman told her experiences. An Englishman who omitted his a h's ' displeased the frufficlious."
Channing now tried to give literary expression to his socialistic yearnings. He wrote in the. Dial, a Socialist organ, and edited the Present, which lasted for Mx months. " Evidently a love df success in the usual sense had nothing to do with the pablica• tion the managers seemed to see the New Jerusalem coming down from Heaven." He contributed also to the Phalanx and the Harbinger. In 1847, he gathered round Ilion in Boston a body of men and women who sympathised in his socialist longings and beliefs, and they formally constituted themselves into "The Religious Union of Associationists." The inaugural ceremony was opened with " sacred music on the piano by John S. Dwight." Mr. Channing read the Bible and spoke, and the " Sanctus " from Mozart's " Twelfth Mass " wee sung. Chesaning was elected minister, and the Association began its work. Its ends were philanthropic, its methods social. Every Sunday evening a meeting was held, enlivened with music, conversation, and debates. On one delectable evening, there were present "eleven Unitarians, three orthodox Congrega- tionalists, roe Presbyterian, one Baptist, one Methodist, one Roman Catholic, three Universalists, two Rationalists, one
Comeonter, one Jew, one Swedenborgian, one Transcendentalist, and two Skeptics. They were not austere people, but joyous, as became genuine believers. Their festivities were frequent. On the occasion of opening a new room in Balfinch Street, an expression of gladness was on all faces." On occasions they celebrated a strange love-feast. On a temporary altar were burnt three candles, red, white, and green ; a dish of fruits, a bottle of water, biscuits, and flowers were displayed; an empty chair represented the Unseen Presence ; there was music, preaching, and, during the repast, religious conversation. On another occasion, Channing, assisted by one Miss McDaniel, ordained a missionary by laying on of hands. But in 1850 this wonderful society was dissolved, and Channing betook himself to minis- terial work at Rochester, New York, where he " entertained a project of starting an independent church."
At Rochester he was thrown into closer relations with the movements for Abolition, for Peace, and for Women's Rights, and he became a fervent believer in Spiritualism and "Table- tipping." In 1854 he came to England, and undertook the charge of a Unitarian congregation in Liverpool, from which he was summoned back to America by the outbreak of the Civil War. He flung himself heart and soul into the cause of Union and Freedom, and the most practical and satisfactory part of his whole life was that which he spent with unflagging courage, sympathy, and devotion in ministering in the hospitals and ambulance corps. At the cessation of the war, he found his occupation gone. He was unpopular with his fellow-religionists, and his socialist dreams were discredited. He returned with his family to England. Here he ministered to a Unitarian con- gregation at Clifton, and later founded a congregation of Un- sectarian 'Socialists in Kensington. "The society dwindled from the start, and ceased in about two years." This was the last definite charge he ever held; but he continued to the end of his life writing, preaching, and lecturing in the unconquerable faith that his Utopia was a reality, soon to be discovered and inhabited by regenerated and united humanity.
In closing this biography, we retain the impression of a singularly pure, gentle, and generous spirit ; a man characterised by a natural attraction towards whatever is lovely and of good report, and by an enthusiastic though misty belief in God and in human nature. On the con- trary side must be set an incurable vagueness of thinking, which found its natural medium in a kind of glorified ver- bosity; a boyish impulsiveness; and an absolute lack of steady purpose, and of the power of adapting means to ends ; above all, one feels that a saving sense of humour would have restrained an excellent man from those grotesque sentimentalisms which alienated his friends, marred his work, and gave occasion to the enemy to blaspheme.
The theological interest of the book lies chiefly in the gradual approximation to orthodox belief. Channing's sense of personal admiration and reverence for the Divine Founder of Christianity led.him to clearer and fuller recognition of His august claims. He came to feel it impossible that one so marvellous in the clearness of His own moral perceptions could have lived in fundamental error as to His own character and functions. What Christ claimed to be, that He must be. Such was, in brief, Channing's later view; and, if he did not follow it out to its necessary com- pletion in Catholic dogma and practice, the fault lay probably in his intellectual structure, rather than in moral or spiritual deadness to religious truth. That he did not outwardly conform to the Anglican Church is a matter of some surprise. For a man full of hunger and thirst after righteousness, revering God, loving Christ, and longing to serve man, keenly alive to mathetic charm, venerating the historic foundation and background of religion, contemning the narrowness, hardness, and provincialism of the sects, and yet unable to bind himself by the formal and explicit declarations which Rome requires, might reasonably find in the lay communion of the Church of England his natural and divinely appointed home.
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