He refused entire sympathy to
the abolitionists, because of the ferocity and violence of their
habitual language and the injustice of their indiscriminate attacks. He
distrusted money worship, wealth, and luxury.
These sentiments and actions grew straight out of his religious
conceptions, and were their legitimate fruit. All his social aspirations
and hopes were rooted in his fundamental conception of the fatherhood of
God, and its corollary the brotherhood of men. It was his lofty idea of
the infinite worth of human nature and of the inherent greatness of the
human soul, in contrast with the then prevailing doctrines of human
vileness and impotency, which made him resent with such indignation the
wrongs of slavery, intemperance, and war, and urge with such ardor every
effort to deliver men from poverty and ignorance, and to make them
gentler and juster to one another.
In no subject which he discussed does the close connection between
Channing's theology and his philanthropy appear more distinctly than in
education. He says in his remarks on education: ... "There is nothing on
earth so precious as the mind, soul, character of the child.... There
should be no economy in education. Money should never be weighed against
the soul of a child. It should be poured out like water for the child's
intellectual and moral life." It is more than two generations since
those sentences were written, and still the average public expenditure
on the education of a child in the United States is less than fifteen
dollars a year.
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