rked decline in religious life. The
history of the Great Awakening shows that. Remonstrances against the
Great Awakening show also how men's minds were moving away from the
theory of the universe which the theology of that movement implied. One
cannot say that in the preaching of Hopkins there is an appreciable
relaxation of the Edwardsian scheme. Interestingly enough, it was in
Newport that Channing was born and with Hopkins that he associated until
the time of his licensure to preach in 1802. Many thought that Channing
would stand with the most stringent of the orthodox. Deism and
rationalism had made themselves felt in America after the Revolution.
Channing, during his years in Harvard College, can hardly have failed to
come into contact with the criticism of religion from this side. There
is no such clear influence of current rationalism upon Channing as, for
example, upon Schleiermacher. Yet here in the West, which most Europeans
thought of as a wilderness, circumstances brought about the launching of
this man upon the career of a liberal religious thinker, when as yet
Schleiermacher had hardly advanced beyond the position of the
_Discourses_, when Erskine had not yet written a line and Campbell was
still a child. Channing became minister of the Federal Street Church in
Boston in 1803. The appointment of Ware as Hollis Professor of Divinity
in Harvard College took place in 1805. That appointment was the first
clear indication of the liberal party's strength. Channing's Baltimore
Address was delivered in 1819. He died in 1847.

In the schism among the Congregational Churches in New England, which
before 1819 apparently had come to be regarded by both parties as
remediless, Channing took the side of the opposition to Calvinistic
orthodoxy. He developed qualities as controversialist and leader which
the gentler aspect of his early years had hardly led men to suspect.
This American liberal movement had been referred to by Belsham as
related to English Unitarianism. After 1815, in this country, by its
opponents at least, the movement was consistently called Unitarian.
Channing did with zeal contend against the traditional doctrine of the
atonement and of the trinity. On the other hand, he saw in Christ the
perfect revelation of God to humanity and at the same time the ideal of
humanity. He believed in Jesus' sinlessness and in his miracles,
especially in his resurrection. The keynote of Channing's character and
convicti