dership of
William Ellery Channing. For six years and a half, he wielded the
cudgels of controversy, but with no great effect, for Channing was a
foeman in every sense his equal. Channing had graduated at Harvard in
1798, a small man of an almost feminine sensibility, with a singular
capacity for winning devoted attachment from all with whom he came in
contact. For two years, he served as tutor in a family at Richmond,
Virginia, where he acquired an abhorrence of slavery that lasted through
life. Upon his return north, he began the study of theology at
Cambridge, and in 1803, became pastor of a church in Boston, where he
soon attracted attention by sermons of a rare "fervor, solemnity, and
beauty." He was from the first identified with the movement of thought,
which came to be known as Unitarian, and gave to the body so-called a
consciousness of its position and a clear statement of its convictions
with his sermon delivered at Baltimore, in 1819, on the occasion of the
ordination of Jared Sparks. For the fifteen years succeeding, Channing
was best known to the public as the leader of the Unitarian movement,
and his sermons delivered during that period constitute the best body of
practical divinity which that movement has produced. In later years, he
was identified with many philanthropical and reform movements, and was
one of the pillars of the anti-slavery cause, though never adopting the
extreme opinions of the abolitionists. Of his rare quality and power as
a pulpit orator many traditions remain, and his death at the age of
sixty-two removed a great power for righteousness.

Even to give a list of the men and women who have sacrificed their lives
in the attempt to carry the gospel of Christianity to heathen nations is
beyond the limits of a book like this, but at least mention can be made
of two of the earliest, Adoniram Judson and his wife, whose experiences
form one of the most thrilling chapters in missionary history.

Adoniram Judson was born in Malden, Massachusetts, in 1788, and after
graduating at Brown University, and taking a special course at Andover
Theological seminary, became deeply interested in foreign missions, and
in 1810, determined to go to Burmah. Securing the support of the London
Missionary Society, he sailed for Asia on the nineteenth of February,
1812. Two weeks before, he had married Ann Haseltine, who consented to
share his work, and who sailed with him. On that long voyage, they had
ample