This study discusses the preaching of William Ellery Channing and Theordore Parker as it contributed to the theological development of American intellectual life. Employing Cathcart's concept of "dialectical enjoinment," this study suggests that Channing and Parker exerted a restricted emphasis because communication with the larger ecclesiastical establishment was restricted and restrained. During the early nineteenth century, while pietistic revivalism emphasized personal subjective religious experience and scholastic orthodoxy formulated theological interest and content, Channing and Parker examined the relationship between individual experience and logical reason. Channing demanded and demonstrated freedom of thought and expression, contending that his theological and rhetorical purpose was the liberation of thinking from theological servitude. Parker became the prominent Transcendentalist preacher. The epistemology of Parker and Channing developed as a challenge to Unitarian trust in the sufficiency of reason as ultimate authority in theological specualtion and the possibility of dialectical enjoinment was thereby diminished. (LL)