Fifty Notable Years

"And I saw that there was an Ocean of Darkness and Death; but an infinite Ocean of Light and Love flowed over the Ocean of Darkness; and in that I saw the infinite Love of God." – George Fox's Journal.

"Universalism was the evening star of the church as the night of the dark ages came on, and appeared as the morning star at the dawn of the Reformation." – Thomas Whittemore, D. D.

PREFACE

Every intelligent reader of that expressive line of Longfellow, "Let the dead past bury its dead," understands that if "the dead past" may be buried, as it deserves to be, the living past will be remembered, recorded, celebrated, honored in all time to come. It is well, always, that we have our eyes open to this fact.

Among the many voices heard in the discussions going on in the religious world during the last half-century, has been that of Christian Universalism. It is still speaking more emphatically and widely than ever. A brief and comprehensive notice of its manifestations is surely worthy of consideration at the present time. It is the intent of this volume to keep in sacred remembrance some of the preachers and defenders of the Gospel of God's impartial grace, who in times when it was frowned upon and misrepresented in and out of the churches, had the Christian courage and loyalty to avow and maintain it. They have made the past not "dead," but gloriously alive in their faith and works.

In addition to the biographical sketches here given, other kindred matter of interest to the general reader will be presented, such as the rise and progress of the Universalist church in America; its growth in agreement with the genius and civilization of our republic; its place in the reformatory work of the last fifty years; its present status; its educational resources and aspects; its definite organized work; its missionary spirit and intent, with an outlook into the future.

The reader will understand that the views here taken are from the standpoint of a New England minister's observation, and do not embrace particulars which a wider survey might have included.

Furthermore, the author would say, that in the account of ministers here given, nothing like a complete biographical encyclopædia is intended; hence, he does not consider himself responsible for what is not in the volume, but presents it as it is, with a thankful heart that he is able in this humble effort to vindicate the faithful dead, and to address the living in behalf of that cause which they honored and promoted.

Melrose Highlands, November, 1882.

CHAPTER I.

THE WORLD'S PROGRESS

"Even now, after eighteen centuries of Christianity, we may be involved in some enormous error, of which the Christianity of the future will make us ashamed." – Vinet.

"THE world moves." This is one of the confident sayings of those who believe in human progression. It is an ordination of Divine Providence from the beginning that man should realize mental and moral growth through the successive generations of his earthly life. And this divine purpose has been manifest in the past history of our race. They who think, taking the amplest view of the present condition of mankind, any former time was better than the present, do not rightfully discriminate. "If," says Sydney Smith, "you say that our ancestors were wiser than we, mention your date and your year." Enlightened humanity cannot be content with its present attainments. Its purest and highest aspirations respond to that clarion word of Christian heroism, "Let us go on unto perfection!"

Of all the centuries of human history which have yet been numbered, none have been more notable than the one in which we are living. Since its commencement some of the most remarkable changes that can be recorded of any age or period have taken place. Education, art, science, human government and enterprise, religious thought, all have made progress. Nations have changed, men have changed, if not in nature, yet in convictions respecting man's capability, obligation, and destiny. The Old World and the New have witnessed these transformations.

It is of the changes indicative of human progress within the middle of the present century that I desire to speak in this volume; for during this period there seems to have been a more rapid succession of them than ever, evincing the capability of our race for an advancement to which no philosophy of the past or present has been able to set bounds. There have been, during this time, nobler revolutions than those effected by war, by the downfall of governments and dynasties, – revolutions more excellent and enduring. We mean those wrought by human thought, investigation, discovery, and invention. Apt and forcible are the words of Dr. Norman Macleod, written at the close of the year 1869: "In a few hours the century will have lived its threescore and ten years. I question if since time began, – with the exception of three or four great eras, such as the calling of Abraham, the Exodus, the birth of Christ, the Reformation, the invention of printing, or, it may be, the breaking up of the Roman Empire, the birth of Mohammed or of Buddha, – such an influential period has existed. The invention of the steam-engine, the discovery of gas, telegraph, chloroform, with the freedom of slaves, the British acquisition of India, the opening up of the world to the Gospel, the translations of the Scriptures, will make it forever memorable." Equally expressive are the words recently spoken by the chief magistrate of Massachusetts: "Think of what has been done in the matter of education, of public schools, of universities of learning for both sexes and all races. In science we have unlocked the secrets of the earth, the air, and the sea, and made them not merely matters of wonder, but handmaids of homely use. In all matters of comfort, of use, of elegance, of convenient living, of house and table, and furniture, and light, and warmth, and health, and travel, what thorough and beneficent advance equally for all, shaming the petty meanness with which, unjust alike to the old times and the new, we inveigh against the new times and overrate the old!"1

And what, more especially, of moral revolution and progress during the last half century? The indications are evidently hopeful and cheering. Human nature is indeed the same, but it has been under new and better influences in modern than in more remote time. Human governments have improved, and even the worst of them are better now than they were fifty years ago. Human laws have been rendered more human and less barbarous. Sympathy for the poor, the degraded, the sinful, has been more truly awakened, and is at this moment in more active operation than at any previous time. The moral obligations of political rulers, and those who sustain them, have been perhaps more vigorously discussed during these years than in any other fifty years preceding; so that there seems now a more favorable opportunity than at almost any previous day this side that of the Jewish Theocracy, to impress this truth upon the public mind, that if individuals should have consciences and a sense of responsibility to God, so should communities; that "righteousness exalteth a nation, while sin is a reproach to any people." Religious toleration also has increased. The rigid sectarianism of the past has been giving way, so that now the hunters of heresy, and the executioners of those who held it, are read of rather than seen. The false deity which even some Christians have worshipped in the past, and the false humanity with which they have supposed themselves endowed, have been in some good degree exchanged for more rational conceptions of God the Father, and of man the offspring. And this change is daily going on; never was it more perceptible than at the present hour.

We should manifest an unpardonable blindness in noting these evidences of human advancement, if we were to leave out of the account the most significant of all forces in it, – we mean Christianity.

This we regard as the foremost power in the spiritual progress thus far realized in our world, and which promises to effect for the race its highest exaltation. Refinement and barbarism have more or less marked the history of the world in the past; they do still; but where does the light of civilization shine brightest among the nations? The answer is, where the Christian religion, in its true spirit, most widely prevails. And it is the increasing prevalence of it which gives us the assurance of that consummation of the Redeemer's work with men, when they all "come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man; unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ."2

Christianity is a universal religion. Herein is its pre-eminence. It is for man everywhere and in all time. No other religion has so clearly asserted this claim for itself, and no other promises to do so much for mankind. True, it has had to make its way against the errors and prejudices and corruptions of the world. It has been mixed with human errors, and has been professed, taught, and practised in too many instances by those who have failed to realize clearly the heavenliness of its spirit, and its far-reaching, regenerative, and overcoming power. Its earliest promulgators failed to see at first this grand characteristic of its universality. An able Christian historian has written: "Nothing is more remarkable than to see the horizon of the Apostles gradually receding, and, instead of resting on the borders of the Holy Land, comprehending at length the whole world; barrier after barrier falling down before the superior wisdom which was infused into their minds; first, the proselytes of the gate, the foreign conformists to Judaism, and, ere long, the Gentiles themselves admitted within the pale; until Christianity stood forth, demanded the homage, and promised its rewards to the faith of the whole human race; proclaimed itself in language which the world had as yet never heard, the one, true universal religion."3

Rev. Dr. Gerhard Uhlhorn, of Germany, in his able work, "The Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism," speaking of the early development of Christianity in the Roman Empire, calls it the first step to its universalism. "Itself passing out from the ancient narrowness into a world-wide breadth of thought and life, the old world became capable of accepting the Universalism of Christianity."[4] The old world and the new have yet many steps forward to take in this pathway of a continually increasing brightness.

CHAPTER II.

CHRISTIAN UNIVERSALISM

"Universalism is a living movement, organized out of the grandest ideas and spiritual facts of the universe; gathering into itself the richest and mightiest moral forces, and working towards the most positive practical ends; and a man is a Universalist, and is the better off for being a Universalist, only as some sense of what Universalism thus is, and of the force of its motives, and the reality of its work, flows down, a quickening power, into his being." – E. G. Brooks, D. D.

THE name Universalism, as connected with Christianity, has been especially notable during the present century. But the principles which it implies were averred by the Christian church in its earliest days. It signifies God's unchanging paternal interest in all his children; an interest insuring his just dealing with them for their obedience or disobedience of his beneficent laws, and their final release from sin, and life in righteousness. Under its present name, Universalism is comparatively recent; its special church history being comprehended in something more than a century. But its principles and doctrines are as old as the Christian records, and are found in the Old Testament teachings. Just as all the sects in Christendom, though belonging to modern times, profess to trace whatever they may deem essential back to the Apostles, so believers in Universalism make the same reference, as one of their number has well stated it: "If we have no business here because we came so late, our neighbors must fall under the same condemnation. In mere assumption we are neither younger nor older than they."

The Universalist Church claims the New Testament as the basis of its doctrines. It cites the Gospels, the Apostolic History and the Epistles, Christ, and his first ministers, as authority for its pretensions. After the apostles, its lights appear in the early centuries of the Christian era. Dr. Edward Beecher, in his able work, "The Scriptural Doctrine of Future Retribution," shows that at about the time of Origen, out of the six theological schools in Christendom, four taught Universal Salvation as the faith of the Christian Church, – the one at Cæsarea, the one at Antioch, the one at Alexandria, the one at Edessa. That eminent light of the early church, Origen, who so ably and successfully maintained the claims of Christianity against the abusive attacks of the heathen Celsus, was a Universalist. So was Alexander, bishop of Jerusalem, and Gregory Thaumaturgus, bishop of Neocæsarea; and so were the most distinguished by piety and learning of the masters of the great theological seminary of the early Church, the Catechetical school at Alexandria. Doederlein said that "the more profoundly learned any one was in Christian antiquity, so much more did he cherish and defend the hope that the suffering of the wicked would at some time come to an end."4 And Hagenbach, commenting on a remark of Augustine, says, "that even that great father of Orthodoxy admitted a relative cessation of damnation." Also, Gieseler affirms, "A belief in the unalienable power of amendment in all intelligent beings, and the limited duration of future punishment, was general in the West, and among the opponents of Origen."5 Of the very time when the influence of Origen was so great in the Church, and when, there can be no good reason to doubt, the doctrine of universal salvation was held by many, if not the majority of Christians, Mr. Lecky, in his history of "Morals in Europe," says, "The Christian community exhibited a moral purity which, if it has been equalled, has never for a long time been surpassed."

Dr. Schaff says of the condemnation of Origen, which included the doctrine of universal restoration, "It was a death-blow to theological science in the Greek Church, and left it to stiffen gradually into a mechanical traditionalism and formalism."

The increased light shed upon ecclesiastical history during the present century shows most clearly the growth of this faith from the first centuries of the Christian era to the present time. It has increased with the mental and moral progress of mankind, with its best civilization.

What is written for these pages will represent especially the rise and progress of the Universalist Church in America. It is proper, however, to say that the faith it represents has had growth also in other lands. It has long been known in Great Britain, where a few churches have made a distinct avowal of it, while individuals scattered here and there have had strong interest in it. The Unitarians of England generally avow it. In the Established Church, faith in the doctrine of endless punishment is not demanded as a condition of church-membership, while some of its most distinguished leaders have advocated with marked ability the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God in full agreement with the doctrine of the final reconciliation of all souls to him. We meet with Universalism in its essential elements in Neander, the eminent Christian historian, and in commentators and scholars in England and on the Continent. The faith is expressed in the poetry of Wordsworth, Tennyson, and others.6 The able ministers Coquerel (father and son) were advocates of it in the Reformed Church in France (Paris). The leaven of this faith is in individuals; the doctrine is often held and openly avowed from the pulpit and through the press, as well as in private by a large number of persons in various communions, who may have but little knowledge of each other, or of the advocacy of this faith elsewhere through special organizations.

CHAPTER III.

UNIVERSALISM IN AMERICA

"Christianity is recognized as a democratic element, profitable for all conditions of men, as the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution are the palladium of our civil and religious rights." – Dr. J. W. Francis, author of "Old New York."

UNIVERSALISM in America took its rise with the Republic. The coming of John Murray to our shores, and the proclamation of the gospel of universal grace, was but a little time previous to the issuing of the Declaration of Independence by the American colonies. These colonies had come to the full and bold utterance with which the Declaration opens: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Through ages of light and of darkness this sacred truth had had but little growth or power in the human mind. But it was there, and was not to die there. It lived through all the world's change, commotion, and revolution, and the set time had now come when it should have a clearer and stronger expression and demonstration than our old or new worlds had yet known. This declaration of our fathers signified the inestimable value of man – of every man – to himself, his fellow man, and his God. It asserts the doctrine of human equality, not that all men have the same intellectual or moral capacities, or should possess an equal amount of property, or be invested with the same political privileges; but the religious doctrine that all are of "one blood," children of one Father, protected by one Providence, made to aid, to bless and build each other up in truth, justice, and righteousness henceforth while the world stands. It signifies human equality and human rights in their broadest and most rational sense. As wrote Alexander Hamilton: "All men have one common origin, they participate in a common nature, and consequently have one common right. No reason can be assigned why one man should exercise any pre-eminence among his fellow creatures, unless they have voluntarily vested him with it." It was this conviction, based on a principle, that carried our fathers through the Revolution, and gave to us that Constitution which was afterwards the work of their hands.

The object of this Constitution is explicitly declared, "To form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." This signified not the growth and strengthening of a sentiment that would justify the building up of one class upon the subjugation of another. We have a statement of the whole truth in the emphatic language of Mr. Bancroft, as he speaks of the intent of the framers of the Declaration on which our Constitution is based. "The Declaration, avoiding specious and vague generalities, grounds itself with anxious care upon the past, and reconciles right and fact. The assertion of right was made for the entire world of mankind, and all coming generations, without any exceptions whatever; for the proposition which admits of exceptions can never be self-evident. And as it was put forth in the name of the ascendant people of that time, it was sure to make the circuit of the world, passing everywhere through the despotic countries of Europe; and the astonished nations, as they read that all men are created equal, started out of their lethargy, like those who have been exiles from childhood, when they suddenly hear the dimly remembered accents of their mother tongue."7

It was meet and right that when this great word went forth to awaken the nations to a new realization, there should be heard at the same time in our land the trumpet notes of that gospel which proclaims the unbinding of the heavy burdens of humanity, liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound. As Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence (and a believer in Christian Universalism), in a letter to Rev. Mr. Winchester, alluding to Rev. John Wesley, writes: "His writings will ere long revive in support of our doctrine – for if Christ died for all, as Mr. Wesley always taught, it will soon appear as a necessary consequence that all shall be saved… At present we wish liberty to the whole world. The next touch of the celestial magnet upon the human heart will direct it into wishes for the salvation of all mankind."

This new political life, upon which our nation entered, signified the equality, true sonship, brotherhood, capability, and earthly destination of man. It meant democracy, not the democracy of numbers merely, nor of political parties struggling for supremacy and the spoils of the victors, but a democracy having in view a common good – the greatest good of all. It means intelligence, thrift, education, and religion for the masses; it means this for one people, means it for all nations of mankind. Precisely this is signified by the re-affirmation on these western shores of that gospel anciently proclaimed to the Athenians by the Christian apostle: "God, that made the world … hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth, … as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring."8 A common humanity, a common interest and destiny, are declared.

It is a common humanity with which Christ is in sympathy; which makes him who would be highest in the Divine estimation the servant of all; which recognizes the Golden Rule, directs the strong to bear the infirmities of the weak, and men everywhere to be helpers one of another, because their interests are not antagonistic, when the laws that govern their nature are clearly understood. They have unity:

Men have, too, a common interest under the Divine guardianship. Wherever there is a man, there is a being in whose soul God has implanted aspirations after himself, a propensity to religion, a feeling after him which may be misled by superstition, or overlaid by ignorance, or elevated by knowledge into purest piety, but which is yet there. Wherever he exists the Sovereign Power holds him in discipline, demands an account from him at his tribunal of impartial justice, and will not permit him to go out of his hands. To whatever heights he ascends, God still encompasses him; into whatever depths he may fall, he is still held by the guardian beneficent power.

One destiny, also, is affirmed of this great body of humanity; a blessing instituted in the beginning, including all families, kindreds, nations. No divine favoritism towards one over another do we see. The law and the prophets point towards this universal grace of God to man. Israel and the Gentile world shall alike share it. The apocalyptic vision opens it up to the eye of faith. "And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I, saying, Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb, for ever and ever."9 What is this but the fact, and the ultimate completeness and glory of the unity of the race? One Father, Brotherhood, Saviour, Homage, Destiny.

Other theologies had made distinctions and endless separations in representing mankind; had denied, as they still deny, this fraternal relationship, this positive family connection; had represented God rather as an arbitrary sovereign than loving Father, and the Divine government a wilful monarchy instead of a just and merciful dispensation under which each soul is of equal value, and the good of one is the good of all. Unbelief has said, as in the language of Spinoza: "The right extends as far as the force of the natural right or law, jus et institutum naturæ is nothing more than the rules of the nature of each individual." The divisions and contentions, classes and castes, the impositions, frauds, and oppressions which have more or less marked the social relations of mankind, all come of this pernicious error growing out of the unchecked selfishness of the human heart. Christian Universalism forever contradicts this error. It affirms that the great body of humanity is one, and that it is death to sunder it. "If one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; if one rejoice, all rejoice together; for the body is not one member, but many."10 In the affirmation of the Gospel, religious bigotry and exclusiveness find a constant reproof; undue boasting, arrogance, and pride are hushed by this grand conviction that "One is our Father who is in heaven, and all we are brethren." The broadest philanthropy is awakened everywhere in man. The world becomes the one great field of effort for the enlightenment, relief, upraising, and perfecting of humanity. In the strong and noble words of another: "Universalism and the Revolution began to rise together. They were rocked together in the same stormy days, in the cradle of American liberty.11 The banner of Universalism is love. Let that banner be lifted up. It shall symbol yet the true idea of the Declaration of Independence, 'All men are created equal.' I look forward to the time when our flag shall wave in unsullied glory, not over smoking ruins, at the mast-head of our battle-ships, on bloody fields, from the parapets of our forts, merely; but the stars and stripes and the white banner together, floating over slaves redeemed, sinners converted, evil statutes abolished, the people united, and the North and the South one."12