Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Memoir of William Ellery Channing, Vol. 3 of 3: With Extracts From His Correspondence and Manuscripts
I fear I understand it too well, that is, I am too prone to shrink from the work. Reform is resistance of rooted cor ruptions and evils, and my tendency is to turn away from the contemplation of evils. My mind seeks the good, the perfect, the beautiful. It is a degree of torture to bring vividly to my apprehension what man is suffering from his own crimes and from the wrongs and cruelty of his brother. NO perfection of art, expended on purely tragic and horrible subjects, can reconcile me to them. It is only from a sense of duty that I read a narrative of guilt or woe in the papers. When the darkness, indeed, is lighted up by moral great ness or beauty, I can endure and even enjoy it. You see I am made of but poor material for a reformer. But on this very account the work is good for me. I need it, not, as many do, to give me excitement, for I find enough, perhaps too much, to excite me in the common experience of life, in meditation, in abstract truth; but to save me from a refined selfishness, to give me force, disinterestedness, true dignity and elevation, to link me by a new faith to God, by a deeper love to my race, and to make me a blessing to the world.
I know not how far I have explained my shrinking from the work of reform, but, be the cause what it may, let us not turn away from us the cross, but willingly, gratefully, accept it, when God lays it on us and he does lay it on us, whenever he penetrates our hearts with a deep feeling of the degradation, miseries, oppressions, crimes, of our human brethren, and awakens longings for their redemption. In thus calling us, he imposes on us a burden, such as the ancient prophets groaned under. We must drink of the cup' and be 'baptized into the baptism' of our Master. We must expect persecution in some form or other; but this is a light matter, compared with the painful necessity of fixing our eyes and souls on evil, and with the frequent apparent failure of our labour. Here, here is the trial.
Could we lift up our fellow-creatures at once to the happi ness and excellence which we aspire after, what a joy would reform be! But, alas! If we do remove a few pressing evils, how many remain! What a cloud still hangs over the earth! Sometimes evil seems to grow up under the efforts to repress it. Were it not for our faith, who could persevere But with this faith, what a secret, sustaining joy ?ows into and mingles with sincere labours for humanity! The little we accomplish becomes to us a pledge of some thing infinitely greater. We know that the brighter futurity which our hearts yearn for is not a dream - that good is to triumph over evil, and to triumph through the sacrifices of the good.
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