William Ellery Channing was an American Schleiermacher, standing at the turning point from the Enlightenment to Transcendentalism, and, like Schleiermacher, he has been treated by historians as the initiator of a movement. He is understood in terms of what followed him. According to Mr. Van Wyck Brooks, he represents the budding of New England. I wish to reverse the perspective and to present Channing as the culmination of the American Enlightenment. In the Revolutionary generation three distinct systems of thought, three historically separate faiths were flourishing; for want of better terms I shall call them rationalism, pietism, and republicanism. Channing, as I shall attempt to show, inherited each of these faiths, understood the issues at stake, felt the struggle intimately, and attempted to formulate a synthesis of all three. His humanitarianism may therefore fittingly be studied as the summation of the ideals of the American Enlightenment. If I had time, I would follow up the negative side of the argument and show that Channing participated only slightly in the thought of the coming generation, the generation from 1830 to 1860, and that he was, on the whole, not willingly a prophet of Transcendentalism. In his last years, when he saw dimly what was to come, he was repelled by much of it and looked back almost wistfully to the faith of his fathers.

The theory of toleration, often the child of indifference or of sectarian interest, is most difficult to analyse, whatever the issues. It may derive from indifference to the “rights” of conscience, while hiding behind an interested manner. The advocate frequently tolerates religious differences and hysterically cries “Crusade” against an economic heresy; or he shows charity toward one sect and simultaneously invokes the wrath of God and the power of Parliament against another which he considers in error. Often the plea proceeds from a minority whose very existence depends on toleration, but which on becoming a majority, demands conformity from others. Moreover, some men who have evoked a positive philosophy of toleration express only an intellectual interest. Yet whatever the basis— sectarian interest, intellectual sympathy, indifference, or a passionate love of freedom—toleration has always aroused sympathy and devotion.

In 1676 an anonymous tract made its appearance on the London bookstalls. The title, The Naked Truth: Or, The True State of the Primitive Church, was calculated to appeal to the theologically minded reader, which at that time meant most laymen as well as clergymen. If by posterity the tract has been remembered—when it has been remembered at all —as having inspired Andrew Marvell to create the memorable figure of Mr. Smirke, to its contemporaries it was one of the major events, both from a literary and from a politico-religious standpoint, of its year.