"No doubt there are some who would tell me that if Christianity were to be judged by its fruits, it deserves any description but that of rational. I might be told that no religion has borne a more abundant harvest of extravagance and fanaticism. I would be told that reason is a calm, reflecting, sober principle, and I should be asked whether such is the character of Christianity today. Perhaps some of you will remind me of the feverish, wild, passionate religion which is now systematically dispersed through our country, and I shall be asked whether a system under which such delusions prevail can be a rational one?

To these objections I answer, you say much that is true. I grant that reason is a calm and reflecting principle, and I see little calmness or reflection among many who take exclusively the name of Christ. But I say, you have no right to confound Christianity with its professors. This religion, as you know, has come down to us through many ages of darkness, during which it must have been corrupted and obscured. Common candor requires that you should judge it as it came from its Founder. Go then, to its original records; place yourselves near Jesus, and tell me if you ever found yourselves in the presence of so calm a teacher. We indeed discern in Jesus great earnestness, but joined with entire self-control. Sensibility breathes through His whole teaching and life, but always tempered with wisdom. Amidst His boldest thoughts and expressions, we discover no marks of ungoverned feeling or diseased imagination. Take, as an example, His longest discourse, the sermon on the Mount. How weighty the thoughts! How grave and dignified the style! You recollect that the multitude were astonished, not at the passionate vehemence, but at the authority, with which He spoke. Read next the last discourse of Jesus to His disciples in St. John's Gospel. What a deep yet mild and subdued tenderness mingles with conscious greatness in that wonderful address. Take what is called the Lord's Prayer, which Jesus gave as the model of all prayer to God. Does that countenance fanatical fervor or violent appeals to our Creator? Let me further ask, does Jesus anywhere place religion in tumultuous, ungoverned emotion? Does He not teach us that obedience, not feeling, marks and constitutes true devotion, and that the most acceptable offering to God is to exercise mercy to our fellow creatures? When I compare the clamorous preaching an passionate declamation too common in the Christian world, with the composed dignity, the deliberate wisdom, the freedom from all extravagance, which characterized Jesus, I can imagine no greater contrast; and I am sure that the fiery zealot is no representative of Christianity." William Ellery Channing.