ress of those all-day sessions
in church and Sunday-school was never eradicated from his life and
writings. Nothing else influenced his work or affected his style as
much as the morals and the literature of the Bible and the sacred songs
that were lined out week after week from the pulpit under which he
literally and figuratively sat when a youth. "If," he has said, "I
could be grateful to New England for nothing else I should bless her
forevermore for pounding me with the Bible and the Spelling-Book."

There is in the possession of the family the "Notes of a Sermon by E.P.
Field," said to have been written by Eugene at the age of nine, when he
affected the middle initial of P in honor of Wendell Phillips. It was
more probably written when he was twelve or fourteen, as he showed at
nine none of the signs of precocity which such a composition indicates.
The youthful Channing took for his text the fifteenth verse of the
thirteenth chapter of Proverbs: "Good understanding giveth favor: but
the way of transgressors is hard." Upon this he expounded as follows:

"The life of a Christian is often compared to a race that is hard
and to a battle in which a man must fight hard to win, these
comparisons have prevented many from becoming Christians.

"But the Bible does not compare the Christian's path as one of hard
labor. But Solomon says wisdom's ways are ways of pleasantness and
her paths are peace. Under the word transgressor are included all
those that disobey their maker, or, in shorter words, the ungodly.
Every person looking around him will see many who are transgressors
and whose lot is very hard.

"I remark secondly that conscience makes the way of transgressors
hard; for every act of pleasure, every act of guilt his conscience
smites him. The last of his stay on earth will appear horrible to
the beholder. Sometimes, however, he will be stayed in his guilt. A
death in a family of some favorite object, or be attacked by some
disease himself, is brought to the portals of the grave. Then for a
little time, perhaps, he is stayed in his wickedness, but before
long he returns to his worldly lusts. Oh, it is indeed hard for a
sinner to go down into perhaps perdition over all the obstacles
which God has placed in his path. But many, I am afraid, do go down
into perdition, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that
leadeth to destruction, and many there be that go in after it.