The upshot showed, however, that controversy was not to be avoided, and
during twenty years from 1815 onwards it raged more or less severely. An
epoch in this long and regrettable warfare was marked by a sermon
preached at Baltimore in 1819. The preacher was one of the most famous
men on the Unitarian roll, _William Ellery Channing_ (1780-1842).
Already eminent, he continued to hold a position unique in the religious
life of New England; his saintly character and his noble if simple
eloquence made him a leader in spite of himself. For a long time he had
maintained a mediating position--all through his life he resolutely
disclaimed sectarianism; but in 1819, after years of discussion, it was
obvious that, for good or evil, the old dogma and the new spirit lay far
apart. From that date liberals and conservatives in the old
Congregational system of New England were divided, and 'Unitarian
Christianity,' which was the subject of Channing's discourse, was a
recognized type in the land. In 1825 the American Unitarian Association
was founded. It was but a struggling society at first, not for lack of
sympathy with its principle, but because many Unitarians, like Channing,
so strongly disliked the notion of forming a new sect that they took
little interest in methods of propagandism common to most religious
bodies.





ENGLISH UNITARIANISM RECOGNIZED BY LAW


By a mere coincidence the British and Foreign Unitarian Association was
founded almost on the same day in 1825 as the American Unitarian