1819 by an
article in _The Christian Disciple_, "Objections to Unitarian
Christianity Considered," and in 1820 by another, "The Moral Argument
against Calvinism"--an excellent evidence of the moral (rather than the
intellectual) character of Unitarian protest. In 1814 he had married a
rich cousin, Ruth Gibbs, but refused to make use of the income from her
property on the ground that clergymen were so commonly accused of
marrying for money.

He was now entering on his public career. Even in 1810, in a Fast Day
sermon, he warned his congregation of Bonaparte's ambition; two years
later he deplored "this country taking part with the oppressor against
that nation which has alone arrested his proud career of victory"; in
1814 he preached a thanksgiving sermon for the overthrow of Napoleon;
and in 1816 he preached a sermon on war which led to the organization of
the Massachusetts Peace Society. His sermon on "Religion, a Social
Principle," helped to procure the omission from the state constitution
of the third article of Part I., which made compulsory a tax for the
support of religious worship. In 1821 he delivered the Dudleian lecture
on the "Evidences of Revealed Religion" at Harvard, of whose corporation
he had been a member since 1813; he had received its degree of S.T.D. in
1820. In August 1821 he undertook a journey to Europe, in the course of
which he met in England many distinguished men of letters, especially
Wordsworth and Coleridge. Both of these poets greatly influenced him
personally and by their writings, and he prophesied that the Lake poets
would be one of the greatest forces in a forming spiritual reform.
Coleridge wrote of him, "He has the love of wisdom and the wisdom of
love."

On his return to America in August 1823, Dr Channing resumed his duties
as pastor, but with a more decided attention than before to literature
and public affairs, especially after receiving as colleague, in 1824,
the Rev. Ezra Stiles Gannett. In 1830, because of his wife's bad health,
Channing went to the West Indies. Negro slavery, as he saw it there, and
as he had seen it in Richmond, more than thirty years before, so
strongly impressed him that he began to write his book _Slavery_ (1835).
In this he insists that "not what is profitable, but what is right" is
"the first question to be proposed by a rational being"; that slavery
ought to be discussed "with a deep feeling of responsibility, and so
done as not to put in jeopardy t