The Present Author:William Henry Channing Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: moment, true. This tone of blended reverence and hope the Present will strive to keep. Fortunately, the class is already large of those who are endeavoring to ta... more »ke this difficult position, and the instinctive sympathies and judgments of the best and truest come to their support. Fully to tell, what all vaguely feel in relation to our prevalent piety, knowledge, and social action, without denial of good, still vital, while cutting off and casting aside what is plainly dead, without servility to the established or triumph in novelties which are yet untried, with sympathy for the past, as his relaxing fingers drop the sceptre, while we pay due welcome to the present who succeeds to reign, needs rare combination of conscience and genius. Rash joy, in what is new, is more disgusting than even bigoted fondness for ancient idols. Frivolity is as false as it is insolent, while garrulous tales, of our ancestors' greatness have the charm at least of gratitude. Yet it is tiresome to be made to wear the cast clothes of forefathers, as if this age could yield no working and gala dress; and it paralyses courage to gaze, on these armor-suits of buried giants, as if no brave acts could now be done. We have our labors and conquests, our discoveries and adventures, before us; and if we truly honor the past, it will teach us the lesson, " Work while it is day." No one man, no one nation, but only the combined voices of the Race, can give volume and clear articulation to the word of Conservative Reform, which all lips stammer to utter, which all ears long to hear. Therefore, in every sphere, however small, let each declare, that Love is the Law of Liberty, that Faith is for ever a Free Inquirer, that Doubt of enlarging Good is virtual Atheism, and Fear of Progress the unpardonable Sin. So let us a...« less