Extracts from letters from Dr. William Ellery Channing to Mrs. Child.
December 21, 1841.
Allow me to express the strong interest I take in you and your labors. You have suffered much for a great cause, but you have not suffered without the sympathy and affection of some, I hope not a few, whose feelings have not been expressed. Among those I may number myself. I now regret that when you were so near to me I saw so little of you. I know that you have higher supports and consolations than the sympathy of your fellow creatures, nor do [45] I offer mine because I attach any great value to it, but it is a relief to my own mind to thank you for what you have done for the oppressed, and to express the pleasure, I hope profit, which I have received from the various efforts of your mind.I have been delighted to see in your “Letters from New York” such sure marks of a fresh, living, hopeful spirit; to see that the flow of genial noble feeling has been in no degree checked by the outward discouragements of life. The world's frowns can do us little harm if they do not blight our spirits, and we are under obligations to all who teach us, not in words, but in life, that there is an inward power which can withstand all the adverse forces of the world.
March 12, 1842.
My dear friend,--You see I reciprocate your familiar and affectionate phrase, and I do it heartily. There are, indeed, few people whom I address in this way, for I fear to use language stronger than my feelings, and I shrink so much from the appearance of flattering words, that I not seldom smother affections that struggle for utterance. But I grow free as I grow older. Age has no freezing influence, and the inward fountain gushes out more naturally. To you I ought to open my heart after what you have told me of the good a loving, cheering word does you. I confess I had thought of you as raised more than the most of us above the need of sympathy. I had heard so often of your brave endurance of adversity, and was conscious of having suffered so little myself for truth and humanity, that I almost questioned my right to send you encouraging words, and certainly did not expect so affectionate a response. It shows [46] me I can do more than I believed by expressions of esteem and admiration. If I can lift up and strengthen such a spirit, how can I keep silence? . . .I understand fully your language when you speak of reform as your work-shop. I fear I understand it too well; that is, I am too prone to shrink from the work. Reform is the resistance of rooted corruptions 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 is lighted up by moral greatness 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, [47] 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 labor. Here, here is the trial. Could we lift up our fellow-creatures at once to the happiness 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 flows into and mingles with sincere labors for humanity! The little we accomplish becomes to us a pledge of something 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.
You see I would wed you and myself to reform, and yet we must do something more than reformers. We must give our nature a fair chance. We must not wither it by too narrow modes of action. Let your genius have free play. We are better reformers, because calmer and wiser, because we have more weapons to work with, if we give a wide range to thought, imagination, taste, and the affections. We must be cheerful, too, in our war with evil; for gloom is apt to become sullenness, ill-humor, and bitterness.
