THE word Destiny distinguishes us from Christians of other churches. We
believe in a good destiny for all. We believe God will make all his bad
children good; he wants to, and he can. He has the disposition, the power,
the means, and the time. If love is all conquering, there is no foe it will
not subdue, not even the rebellious will of man. We believe
more
than our brethren of other churches, not less. No faith is so grand or
complete as ours, and yet so misunderstood. All benevolent people want it
to be true, but think it is too good to be true. The selfish man hopes for
something better, and looks forward to it, for himself. The benevolent
man--and every Christian is one--is looking forward to something better for
all the other members of the great family; and he will never be satisfied
and perfectly happy until there is something better for all. Questions
asked every day betray the general ignorance prevailing as to the beliefs
of Universalism. People ask if we believe in God, if we believe in Christ,
if we believe in the Bible, if we believe in a hereafter, if we believe in
prayer, and even if we believe in
punishment,-- when I know of no
Christian people who emphasize as strongly as we do the absolute certainty
of punishment. It seems to be the opinion of most all Christian people that
our church is founded upon negations, whereas our affirmations express
stronger faith than that professed by any other church on earth. And now it
is my purpose to call attention to some of these great affirmations.
The
text will be found in Johns Gospel, 6:44,45: "No man can come to me, except
the Father which hath sent me draw him; and I will raise him up at the last
day. It is written in the prophets, and they shall be all taught of God.
Every man, therefore, that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father,
cometh unto me."
According to this declaration of our Master, no man can come to him
until moved upon by the divine spirit; he can do nothing of himself,
nothing till drawn by the Father. This completely explodes the free-will
doctrine we hear so much about. Then Jesus declares that all shall be
taught of God--shall--and tells what the result will be: "Every man that
hath heard," --all shall hear,-- "and hath learned of the Father," --all
shall learn,--"cometh unto me." Do you observe that the doom of all sinful
men is here pronounced? They are doomed to come unto him. When he said, "I
will draw all men unto me," he pronounced the same doom. Speaking of those
outside the fold, he said: "Them also! must bring, and they shall
hear my voice, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd." He dooms them
to come in! Most all our preachers doom them to stay out. I know you may
refer me to his words in Matthew 26, where he says, "These shall go away
into everlasting punishment," and "Depart from me ye cursed into
everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his angels." As I understand
these words, they are in perfect harmony with the text I have quoted. What
is the significance of the word "everlasting" in the Bible? It is applied
to things which have come to an end. and to things which must in their
nature come to an end.
Therefore it does not signify endless duration. Besides, the word
"everlasting," or "eternal," is from aion, which means age; and
frequently our Saviour spoke of the end of the aion, or
age. Surely he would not speak of the end of a period of time that has no
end. This is the significance of these threats uttered against those who
were so shriveled in selfishness that they refused bread to the hungry and
water to the thirsty, refused to take the stranger in, clothe the naked,
visit the sick, and go to those in prison. They must be cured! Punishment
is administered to cure, and must last till it has accomplished its
purpose. This is the full meaning of the everlasting punishment in the
passage under consideration. And the everlasting fire has great
significance. It means that the selfishness of those people was to be
destroyed, burned out. "Devil and his angels" are figurative terms, to
intensify the burning process, the fires of remorse that would continue
until those guilty souls were cleansed, purged, purified. Remember, the
fire symbol in the Bible means this. Fire is an agent of destruction and an
emblem of purification. See First Corinthians 3:11 -15 and Hebrews 12:29.
So, then, these threats, that seem so awful, mean what the promises mean,
namely that all sinful souls shall be cured.
A few words more in connection with the text. The messenger to
sinful souls, what truth must he interpret that will turn them from their
evil ways? This great truth Christ revealed about God. While alienated by
sin, a man feels the sense of loneliness, as did the Prodigal Son; and out
of his sense of desertion he will say, "I have no friends, no one cares for
me, no one loves me. I have no man in all the world who sympathizes with
me." Then the messenger of Christs gospel will assure him that there is one
being who cares for him, and loves him, and sympathizes with him; that
being is his Heavenly Father. This truth must be interpreted to the sinful
soul, he must understand it. And what will be the result? He will want to
be a better child. Filial emotions will be awakened in his soul. He will
turn his face toward the Fathers house. He will resolve to be a dutiful
child of that Heavenly Father. Then he will come to Christ--gladly embrace
the principles of his religion. This, friends, is the strong affirmation of
our text. All shall be taught of God; all shall hear and understand; all
shall learn of the Father; and then, as the Master said, "they will come to
me."
All means universal, Universalism means all. It is from the word
universe. There is nothing good in the universe which it does not include.
As a system of belief it includes all that is good and true in all
religious ancient and modern, in all systems, in all philosophies, in all
churches, in all worlds, and in all the universe. I accept the Christian
religion as the infallible, the authoritative religion, because it takes up
into itself and embodies all that is good and true; excludes only that
which is false. There are but few Christians today who will not agree with
us in the universality of the Christian religion in respect to its
provisions. Its provisions, they say, are universal, but not its results.
We affirm that it will be universal in its results. If not so, the
provisions are inadequate, therefore not universal. And until all
Christians shall come to believe that the religion of Christ will be
universal in its results, the denominational name we bear must be retained,
distinguishing us from Christians of other sects. Only in this sense,
therefore, are we under obligation to remain sectarian. Loyalty to truth
demands it of us.
There is truth in all churches, and error too. If any church assumes
infallibility, that it is right and all others are wrong, that church is
guilty of colossal egotism. There is no infallible church. If a man assumes
he knows all there is worth knowing, and shuts himself against all the open
avenues of truth and knowledge, he is guilty of monumental conceit! How
superficial such a man! Great thinkers, the ripest scholars, are humble men
because they know so little. They are men who know enough to know how
little they know. I believe the Methodists have some truth, and the
Baptists and the Presbyterians and the Episcopalians, and possibly the
Catholics. I believe the Universalists have a little, not much. But
Universalism, this system of faith, includes all the truth that all
churches have. Do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that we have all
the truth. We know but little. Universalism includes the little we have
learned and all there is to be learned. It includes all that all men know
and all that they dont know. Now, if a partialist ever suffers himself to
say a word against Universalism, he says that word against all the truth he
has; for it is part of the whole. I am sure that I cannot be misunderstood
when I say we believe more than any other Christians. We do if the whole is
greater than a part. We stand for the whole. Our system of faith
must include all truth that has been discovered, and all that is yet to be
discovered. Hence it is a progressive faith.
I trust the way is now prepared for a more specific statement of our
affirmations.
1. We believe in this world, in the book of nature. All the laws of
nature are Gods laws, and are working out his purposes. They point to
fulfillment, to victory, and not to defeat. This glorious prophecy is in
every movement and evolution witnessed by the eye of science. The divine
writing is on every page of this great volume; earth and cloud and sky all
teaching the ways of God. Everywhere is the impress of benevolence and the
radiance of eternal beauty. What ajoy to live in Gods beautiful world, with
its teaming fields and waving forests and fruitful valleys and towering
mountains and flowing streams! How thankful must we be for the thronging
delights in this lower mansion of our Fathers House. Let us cultivate a
love for this world, and try to live here and enjoy it as long as we can.
Its victories will fit us for higher victories, and there will be
compensations for its defeats. Restorative and compensating laws are ever
active, making good the losses. Science, penetrating to the heart of nature
and unsealing its hidden laws, teaches man that there is but one force,
with different manifestations. It manifests itself in magnetism, in
electricity, in heat and motion, in chemical affirmity, etc.; but there is
but one great central force, and that is good. Way back in the benighted
past, man, lacking foresight to see how the discords and conflicts of
nature would result in harmony, came to ascribe things he called evil to
evil beings; hence the worlds belief in devils, ghosts, hobgoblins, and
witches. All these are perishing; the light of science is killing them.
Should one atom get beyond the reach of this one force, there would be
endless discord in the universe. Should one soul get beyond the reach of
this one force--and what shall we call it now? The force behind all forces
and all worlds is love; if God is love, should one soul get beyond the
reach of this Almighty force of love so that it is unable to draw it back,
win it back, then there would be two forces in the universe, eternal
discord. We believe no such catastrophe can happen. Nature means victory.
Therefore we read Universalism from this book. Every law operative here,
and all the laws relating our world to other worlds, are prophetic of
victory. Nowhere in this universe do we read a prophecy of defeat.
2. Universalism affirms belief in human nature, another book whose
writings point to victory. We stand for the worth of man. Fashioned in Gods
image, man is of infinite value, worth more in the sight of God than all
the stars of heaven. The divine Fatherhood means this. Though yet a child,
incomplete, imperfect, wayward, man bears the image of God, which image God
himself cannot destroy or lose; God cannot destroy a thing that is
indestructible. Wrapped up in this divine embryo are capacities and powers
that fit man for endless growth and progress; for, between man the
Infinite, and God the infinite, there is scope for a progression that can
never end. What joy in believing this; for man is truly happy only when he
is growing, and here is assurance of endless growth. In this sense the
spiritual perfection reached by Gods children will be relative, not
absolute. There is but one absolute Being, and we may approximate his
perfection forever.
Man is not made, he is making. Those who have made greatest progress are
still in the Fathers primary school. There will be higher departments, one
grade leading to another, on and up forever. The school of God will never
let out.
What are all the attainments man has yet made, and marvelous they are,
as compared with the attainments he is capable of making? As the ratio
between a grain of sand and this globe! Think! The greatest and wisest have
only made a little beginning in this world. Not one germ of power is
unfolded to its utmost limit; and there will remain countless capacities
yet latent, when we go from these scenes into the great world awaiting us.
The best, the most advanced and ripened, will need more time; and what of
the myriads who make no beginning in this life. How we should exult because
God has plenty of time, because he has eternity to train his children in!
We stand as a church vindicating man because of his power, and because of
his worth and his incompleteness and the possibilities of his divine
sonships.
We need only to know the meaning of Fatherhood to be assured of Gods
regard for his children. In his Sermon on the Mount, our Saviour calls the
Supreme Being Father or Heavenly Father sixteen times. Some take the
position that God is not the Father of evil men, but in this sermon the
Master says he is. If he is not, we are all spiritual orphans, and have no
right to say the Lords Prayer; and how guilty of inconsistency when we go
down among the wicked, teaching them to say this prayer if God is not their
Heavenly Father.
Universalism affirms belief in inherent immortality. Without this divine
inheritance what can man do to become immortal? No more than a tree. The
trouble is, Christian people have failed to make a distinction between
immortal life and eternal life. It was a part of Christs mission to
reveal immortality, but no part of his mission to create it. Immortal
life has reference to duration; eternal life to quality. Said Jesus, "This
is life eternal, to know thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou
hast sent." Then it is spiritual knowledge, or love in the soul. This it
was Christs mission to create. Were this simple fact understood the
doctrine of conditional immortality, that ills acquired through faith in
Christ, would soon vanish from the minds of men.
Another way to understand the worth of man in the sight of God is to
think of the value of our children to us. Go to that mother with her little
one a month old; offer her all the gold and silver and diamonds ever taken
from the earth. Closer to her bosom she will press her darling, and refuse
the wealth you offer. We rise into the region of higher values. Charley
Ross's father went over the world, crossing seas and continents, for twenty
years and more in weary and fruitless search for his boy. He died without
finding Charley. I believe he will take up the search on the other shore,
and that there will be no true happiness for him in any world until he
finds his lost child. This is the nature of love, true parental love. Every
man is a child of God; and however sinful he may become, he can do nothing
to diminish Gods love for him.
I know we meet with many things to stagger our faith. In many semblances
of human beings we see no sign of the divine image. To our sight nothing
good is visible. We look on the outward appearance; God sees within. The
image is there, whether we see it or not. I visited a paper-mill in Maine,
desiring to witness all the processes. I asked at a certain point why I
could not see the water-mark. The workman answered, it must go through this
process and that, explaining them all; then after it is finished and
polished, said he, "you can see the water-mark." So it is with the soul
disfigured or hidden by sin. It must pass through the different processes
of divine grace, be washed and cleansed; then the divine image will
appear.A lady showed me a dry and shriveled root she had received by mail;
and she said if I would call in a few weeks I would see a beautiful
tuberose filling the room with fragrance. It seemed impossible. I saw no
sign of life or beauty or fragrance in the root so seemingly dead. But in a
few weeks I saw and sensed the beautiful flower. Before plucking that
water-lily, so exquisite in grace and sweetness, you follow down the long
stem, and bring up a handful of dark, slimy mud. You must confess the lily
came from that. Now, if the sun-rays could penetrate that water so impure,
and the dark unsightly earth, and bring out a flower of such delicate
beauty and fragrance, why can you not believe that the rays from the Sun of
Righteousness will penetrate the darkened souls of men and finding the
hidden germs of divinity, kindle them into bloom and fruit?
We stand for the worth of man. The child, however frail, is of infinite
value in his Fathers sight. God has given to not one of his children power
to sin himself out of existence or beyond the reach of love; and no human
being has power to defeat the purpose of the Infinite One! Every soul is
worth saving, and will be saved.
3. There is another book Universalists believe in. Most
heartily we believe in the Bible, and we stand for the spiritual
interpretation of the sacred volume. We go beneath figurative speech,
metaphor, symbol, parable. Surface students, by literalizing these, have
missed the deep meanings, and builtup doctrines contrary to the great
principles disclosed in this book. When reasoning from these three great
books, the book of nature, the book of human nature, and the book of
revelation, we get our ideas of life and destiny, and proclaim them to the
world, convinced that these three books agree. How often we meet with such
words as these: "Oh, yes, your doctrines are grand, I would like to believe
them; but how can I! for there is the Bible." Then the Bible, they think,
contradicts the book of human nature. If this is correct, God writes one
revelation in the hearts of his children and on the pages of natures
volume, and another in a book; divided against himself. Friends. when
interpreted by its general tone and spirit, the Bible supports Universalism
most strongly. It is a book of hope, a book of victory. From beginning to
end its Universalism shines forth. Temporary defeats are recognized as
coming to men, but not final. And when God is recognized, when his guiding
hand is seen. there is no such thing intimated as defeat or failure. The
whole trend is toward victory. Notes of melody, strains of hope, songs of
victory, rise and throb, and blend in anthems of rapture, and the glad
refrain goes pulsing on. In the first pages we have a prophecy of victory.
The truth, symboled by the seed of the woman, should crush the serpents
head; symbol of all that is bad in man. In the very last chapter, in that
book of visions, that same prophecy glows in more exultant strains. We see
standing by the river, clear as crystal, the tree of life, called the tree
of life because it will never die. "And its leaves are for the healing of
the nations." That means final Universal cure.
Many Christians, no doubt, are sincere in believing that there are other
scriptures which contradict all this. The misinterpretation and
misapplication of metaphorical language, Oriental parables and symbolry,
has been very misleading. For example:
The Garden of Eden has been literalized, and made to teach the fall of
man, whereas it is an allegory, teaching the rise of man. It
illustrates mans beginnings in moral education. Before the moral law began
to act, man stood down on the animal plane. There was nothing alive but the
animal part. The first motion or movement of the moral law found expression
in the sense of modesty. They began to make clothes for themselves, using
first the leaves of fig-trees, and soon they are making coats of skins. The
awakening of the moral sense lifts them above the animal plane. Now they
know the difference between right and wrong. Is not this a rise? Only moral
beings know moral distinctions. So we stand for the rise and perfection of
man, not his fall and ruin. Again, many Christians have been led to believe
that this physical world is coming to an end. There are seven passages in
which the end of the world is spoken of; but in each one the word world is
translated from aion, which means age. There is not a passage in
the Bible in which the end of the cosmos is spoken of. All religious
teachers ought to know this. The Jewish age, or dispensation, was coming to
an end. And it did come to an end when Jesus said it would, in that
generation. And it should be remarked here that Christs coming was spoken
of in connection with that event. His spiritual kingdom would have a new
impetus when the great enemy, the Jewish nationality, would be overthrown.
His truth would be signalized with greater power in the world. So Jesus,
foreseeing this, spoke of his spiritual coming in connection with that
event. The last two verses of the sixteenth chapter of Matthew should be
the key of interpretation to all other passages in which the coming of
Christ is spoken of: "For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his
Father, with his angels, and then he shall reward every man according to
his works. Verily I say unto you, there be some standing here which shall
not taste of death till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom."
What are we to think of the intelligence of a man who is looking for that
coming? Are there people living now who were living then?
As superficial have been the interpretations of Christian people
concerning the atonement and the trinity. The doctrine of vicarious
atonement is not taught in the Bible, nor the doctrine of the trinity.
And I am sure that there is not a passage of Scripture that so much as
hints the doctrine of endless punishment. As we have seen, everlasting does
not mean endless duration in the Bible. There is not a word in the
Scriptures, which means endless duration, applied to punishment, or to sin,
or to death.
There is no time to say more on this point. My contention is this: The
book of revelation, rightly interpreted, agrees with all other books of
God, teaching,
"One God, one law, one element,
One far-off, divine event,
Toward which the whole Creation moves."
4. Universalism affirms a perfect God. He is good. He is perfectly good.
He is love. He is perfect love. He is Father. He is a perfect Father. He is
perfect in all his attributes. Calvinism limits his goodness. Simplified,
it says: God can save all men, but he does not want to. Arminianism limits
his power. It says: he wants to save all men, but cannot. And how glaring
is the limitation of his wisdom according to the superficial free-will
argument so often met with? We are told that God will not save a man
against his will, that he cannot save an unwilling soul. What Universalist
ever taught that God will save a man against his will? He does not save men
that way, by arbitrary force; that is not his method. He saves men by their
wills, through moral influence. Strange people cannot be made to understand
that God has resources in his universe, the all conquering agencies of
love, to make the unwilling soul willing! He has light enough to make the
blind see, and love enough to melt the hardened heart. See now how the
free-will argument limits the wisdom of God. He is omniscient, all-knowing.
Then from the beginning he knew when he made man a free moral agent that he
was giving him power to defeat the divine purpose, giving his child power
to work out his own eternal ruin and shatter the throne of Heaven; knew
that he was giving his child a power which he himself could not control. In
other words, a power was bestowed on man mightierthan the Almighty. That
is, God made man stronger than himself. What are we to think of his wisdom?
Doesnt this limit the divine wisdom? Now, then, when we limit Gods goodness
or power or wisdom, we make him an imperfect God. If God is not perfect,
there is no God. So this is atheism. Make what else of it you can.
Universalists are not atheists, because they believe in a perfect God, a
God who will not be defeated. What means the divine Fatherhood? He chastens
his children as sons, punishes them for their good. If endless, how plainly
it would defeat his purpose. Strange people cannot see this? Under the
divine government punishment is spiritual medicine. What its purpose? Love
punishes to cure. Remember three things right here. Love never changes;
love never lets go; love punishes to cure. Remember six points in
punishment. (a) Its nature: it is spiritual medicine. (b) Its
object: it is administered as a remedy, to cure. (c) Its
certainty: the medicine must be given. To withhold it would defeat the
cure. The common scheme of salvation we hear so much about would defeat
salvation. (d) Its duration: it will stop when it has
accomplished its purpose. Love never measures by time nor by quantity,
but by results, (e ) The time: now, when the sin is
committed, unless the soul has reached a state of moral insensibility, in
which case there would be a suspension until the soul came to itself. In
this event, for sins repeated and persisted in, punishment would be
cumulative. When the judgment day comes, more intense, more terrible, the
remorse, the pain. But for the good of the sinning soul. All Gods judgments
are good. They are not to hurt, but to bless, not to drive away, but to
draw hack his wayward child. And always and everywhere the throne of
judgment is the moral law in the bosom of man. (f)
The place: wherever the guilty soul is. Place does not
constitute heaven or hell. These are conditions. With heaven within, the
immortal world will be heaven. It is so here. And these spiritual laws will
never change. I low does God punish his sinful children? Through the action
of the moral law. If his disobedient children do not receive medicine
enough to cure them in this world, they will get it in the next. How? In
the same way; through the action of the moral law. And that, being a part
of our spiritual structure, we will take with us wherever we go. If it is
left behind we cease to be moral beings. As well claim that God will change
his method because we cross a State line as because we exchange this world
for another.
I have considered the subject of punishment thus in detail, hoping to
make its nature and object clear. A perfect Father, all loving and
merciful, punishes his wayward children because he loves them,
consequently for their profit.
5. Universalists believe in a victorious Savior. We do not believe in
the Deity of Christ, but in his divinity. If he were the "very God" how
could he increase in wisdom? And we would have no example, no
spiritual pattern. An absolute being cannot he an example for a finite
being. Knowing we cannot reach the infinite, we have nothing to stimulate
us to strive for perfection. The mission of Christ was to disclose the
Heavenly Father to his children, and make his love a saving power. He did
not create the Fathers love. He revealed it. It was his mission to make
Christians. not to save them. To become a Christian is to be saved. It
is not going somewhere; it is becoming something. To express it
all in a sentence, the mission of Christ was to cure all men of sin.
We are Universalists because we believe he will accomplish the work he
came to do; he will succeed. We believe it for three reasons: (a)
He has medicine enough to cure all. (b) He has sufficient skill to
administer the medicine. (c) He has sufficient time to administer
the medicine in. So we can sing consistently about the good physician. He
will never save a good man. To become good is to he saved. He will never
save a righteous man. To be saved is not going somewhere after one becomes
righteous; it is becoming righteous. Christ has no more to do with
getting men to heaven, in the sense of a place in another world,
than he has to do with getting them across the Mississippi River. To
believe, then, in a Universal Savior, a triumphant Savior, is to believe
more in Christ than any other Christian people. And so we sing our glad
song of victory. The lost, Christ came to seek and save; but these the very
people he came to save, and needing salvation most, some Christians think
he will lose. Universalism makes its strong affirmation that Jesus will
save, redeem fom sin, all the lost!
6. Universalism affirms a good destiny for the entire human race. At the
outset I dwelt upon this distinguishing feature of our faith. A few
additional words I think are necessary for the reason that, however clear
we make to ourselves our views touching destiny, we are still confronted,
and how frequently, with the old question, "What will become of wicked
people who die in their sins?" The idea seems fixed in the minds of people
that God can do nothing for his sinful children after they leave this
world. Now, the relationship existing between the spiritual Father and his
children is spiritual. Death cannot change it. Death cannot separate us
from the love of God, said the great apostle. Has redeeming love physical
limitations? Will we get beyond its reach by going to another world? It
would be as reasonable to confine its action to New York, or even to Rhode
Island, as to confine it to this world.
What, then, is our answer to this question so perplexing to many anxious
souls? This: Those who are not cured in this world, and none are completely
cured here, will be cured in the next. Old Orthodoxy says they will be sent
to an eternal penitentiary. New Orthodoxy says they will establish
themselves in endless rebellion against God, become eternal anarchists. The
doctrine of annihilation, another phase of New Orthodoxy, says they will be
blotted out of existence. Which answer can you best harmonize with the will
and purpose and character of an infinitely good God? Universalism answers,
They will be cured.
The doctrine of endless brutality, politely called eternal
punishment, must be utterly abhorrent to every thinking mind, revolting to
every benevolent instinct. It is a hideous, ghastly, fiendish doctrine,
heart-paralyzing, soul-stifling. It makes God infinitely worse than Nero,
his malignancy transcending that of all the fiends of cruelty that ever
lived. If true for only one soul, then that soul will receive more pain
from the hands of God than the whole human family have received from all
the monsters of brutality that have cursed our world; because there is no
end to it. This doctrine is the great satanic blasphemy of the ages. Its
ghastliness is monumental. It outpagans the blackest paganism! It ought to
be a disgrace to preach the colossal infamy! It should cause the most
brutal savage to blush with shame to listen to it! It has crushed more
hearts, darkened more homes, caused more insanity and suffering and pain,
it has made more infidels and atheists, than all other scourges that have
ever desolated our fair world? Oh, friends! I cant do it justice. I only
wish I could make all men see its hideousness as I see it, and hate the
infamous thing as I hate it!
How sad to hear good, generous, kind-hearted people say they believe it!
They would be insane if they did. They are phonograph-Christians. They
simply talk out what has been talked into them. No benevolent man, no man
who has a soul in him, can sit down and think of the doctrine five minutes
without discarding it forever. How benumbing to the sensibilities of good
people? When we ask them how they expect to be happy in heaven when their
fellowmen, and possibly their own loved ones, are suffering in torment, and
doomed to remain and suffer endless pain, they answer, "Oh, we will be so
changed?" This is the saddest thing I ever heard. Think what it means! It
means ossification of the heart. It means that they are to undergo a
process of hardening, that they are to be robbed of love, robbed of all
feeling and sympathy and tenderness and pity! What a change? Hearts tender
here with Christ's compassion there will turn to stone. It means a world of
eternal heartlessness. Whittier says, "If man goes to heaven without a
heart, God knows he leaves behind his better part."
Friends, I am more concerned about the destiny of saints, such as are to
undergo this change, than the most wicked sinners that leave this world
unsaved. In all reverence I ask, would you not ten thousand times rather be
an asbestos sinner in the lowest hell with some feeling left than to be a
petrified saint in heaven? According to this common answer, holiness in
heaven will consist in being wholly selfish!
Finally, we believe in a good destiny for all; that God will cure all
his sinful children, because He has the disposition, the
power, the means, and the time. Four good reasons. A
million more might be given; and no man can think of one single reason why
he should not cure them.
So we sing the glad song of victory. All the resources of the universe
are pledged to the great consummation, Gods character, and his infinite
love. I love to think of the agencies we see now at work. Every exertion
you put forth to make this world better is so much done to make our
doctrine true. God works through instrumentalities. We are all to be
agents. A Universalist who is idle, doing nothing to make his doctrine
true, is a counterfeit.
Every deed of mercy that lessens pain; every charity that assuages
sorrow and distress; every church that throws its arms of love around the
wayfaring man; every institution of learning that kindles thoughts of a
higher world; every new discovery disclosing larger visions of truth; every
fresh avenue of commerce opening wider channels for the diffusion of Gods
love; every object lesson in this great outer world teaching Gods bounty
and care; every flower preaching its sermon of beauty by the wayside; every
star that looks down from the upper deeps, kindling the sense of mystery
and wonder in the human breast; every cloud sleeping in the azure heights,
serene with suggestions of peace; every setting sun painting the sky, and
turning to gold the retreating clouds; every breeze that wafts the incense
of healing and of hope; every ray of light that breaks the films of sin, to
let love into the hardened heart; every drop of water that revives the
drooping plant; every fountain breaking from the mountain side; every
brooklet singing its glad song; every sparkling lake catching in its
dimples the colors of the sky; every river flowing down and mingling in the
sea; every ocean that sends up its mists to fill the clouds-- all teaching
the goodness and bounty of God; every experience that deepens human life;
every sorrow that sweetens the spirit; every pain that chisels and refines;
every new-born hope lifting the tendrils of a shattered faith; every
anguish that plows the soul, cleansing the grosser man; every defeat that
breaks the defiant will; every throb of sympathy pulsing from heart to
heart; every pang of remorse that makes sin ghastly, and turns its victim
into the path of life; every blaze of light revealing to groping souls the
awful darkness that domes the sinners sky; every strain of music reviving
sweet memories of the past; every sunny face that lights up the home of
man; every voice of childhood prattling the song of trust; every angel God
sends into this world to nurse back to life and health the lost of earth,
and lead them up the celestial highway, the Kings highway, from glory unto
glory, and at last into the resplendent light of the perfect day,-- all,
all these are agents, messengers, instruments, to fulfill the sublime
prophecy of our Universalist faith ,--final triumph, glorious victory! --
instruments breathed upon from higher worlds, and weaving their countless
strains for the grand, triumphant, joyous, matchless symphony of God!
Oh! friends, stand on these heights, catch this vision, sing this song,
this glad new song; voice it with the paeans of angelic choir; let your
glad and joyous strains blend with the music of the stars. Come down and
sing it with the prophets of a larger day; sing it with the poets of a
sweeter tune; chant it in the strains of Tennyson:--
"Oh yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroyed,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete.
Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last--far off--at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring."
AFFIRMATIONS
OF UNIVERSALISM