"I affirm, and would maintain, that true religion consists in proposing, as our great end, a growing likeness to the Supreme Being. Its noblest influence consists in making us more and more partakers of the Divinity. For this it is to be preached. Religious instruction should aim chiefly to turn men's aspirations and efforts to that perfection of the soul, which constitutes it a bright image of God. Such is the topic now to be discussed; and I implore Him, whose glory I seek, to aid me in unfolding and enforcing it with simplicity and clearness, with a calm and pure zeal, and with unfeigned charity."
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"Likeness to God", an address in Providence, Rhode Island (1828)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Ellery_Channing
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William Ellery Channing
William Ellery Channing (April 7 1780 – October 2 1842) was the foremost Unitarian theologian and preacher in the United States in the early nineteenth century.
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