Three years after Charles graduated from Bowdoin College in 1850 he taught modern languages there, but when the question of faculty tenure arose, the overseers vetoed the prospect because he was a Unitarian. He then became the minister of the Unitarian Church in Bangor, Maine.

When the minister accepted the Harvard Corporation’s invitation to the Bussey Professorship, his courses included ”East Asiatic Religions,” an innovation in American teaching. When he became dean of the Divinity School, the faculty sought to have each teaching candidate undergo a physical exam. When the dean noted that such a policy might have ruled him out, they withdrew the motion. From youth Dean Everett was blind in one eye.

His publications included The Science of Thought, Religions Before Christianity, and Fichte’s Science of Knowledge.

Francis Greenwood Peabody said of him: "It was permitted to a generation of students for the ministry to be guided and restrained by a character so self-effacing as never to be conspicuous, yet so convincing as to communicate both life and thought."