William Henry Channing (
May 25, 1810 -
December 23, 1884) was an
American Unitarian
clergyman, writer and philosopher.
William Henry Channing was born in
Boston, Massachusetts. Channing's father died when he was an infant, and responsibility for the young man's education was assumed by his uncle,
William Ellery Channing, the pre-eminent
Unitarian theologian of the early nineteenth century. The younger William graduated from
Harvard College in 1829 and from
Harvard Divinity School in 1833. He was ordained and installed over the Unitarian church in
Cincinnati in 1835. After filling several pastorates in the United States, he succeeded (1857)
James Martineau as minister of the
Hope Street Unitarian Chapel, Liverpool, England. At the commencement of the American Civil War he returned (1862) and took charge of the Unitarian church in
Washington, D. C. He was one of the early supporters of the
socialistic movement in this country and was editor of the
Present and the
Harbinger. In 1848 he presided over The Religious Union of Associationists in Boston, a socialist group which included many members of the
Brook Farm commune. William Henry Channing, along with the younger Ellery Channing, was a
Transcendentalist. He was a prolific writer, contributing to the
North American Review, the
Dial, the
Christian Examiner, and other serials, a member of the
Transcendental Club, and corresponded with
Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Among his inspirational writings, one piece, his "Symphony", is well-known:
:
To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not, rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common -- this is my symphony.
Channing was, in 1863 and 1864, the
Chaplain of the United States House of Representatives. He died in
London. 
