USA > Ohio > Twenty-five years in the West > Part 23
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that country : "According to the Brahmos, God is a loving Father, and men are his children; to secure hap- piness, men must avoid sin and subdue the sins to which they are prone. They must fulfil all human duty, and especially devote themselves to works of benevolence among the ignorant and poor. For the wrong they do, they will suffer punishment ; but their sufferings are remedial, and will purify the soul from all its errors. Meditation and prayer are to be employed for the same end; and to assist their followers in this duty, a little book has been published, which is extensively used."
In Egypt, the land of ancient wisdom, many of the priests, Dr. Enfield thinks, entertained a belief in the salvation of all men. See his " History of Philosophy," Book I, chapter 8. In the old Persian mythology, the same idea is contained. It has a God and a Savior; and the latter will finally restore all from the power of satan.
For three or four hundred years after Christ, many of the leading Christian writers were believers in the " Restitution of all things." Says Clement, President of the Theological School in Alexandria, the most noted School of the second and third centuries : " How is he a Savior and Lord, unless he is the Savior and Lord of all? He is certainly the Savior of those who have believed : and of those who have not believed he is the Lord, until by being brought to confess him they shall receive the proper and well-adapted blessing for them- selves." "The Lord is the propitiation not only for our sins, that is, of the faithful, but also for the whole world , therefore he indeed saves all, but converts some by punishments, and others by gaining their free-will, so that he has the high honor that unto him every knee should bowe, of things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth
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that is, angels, men, and the souls of those who died before his advent."
Clement's great pupil, Origen, was a noted advocate of Universal Salvation. He says: "We assert that the Word who is the wisdom of God, shall bring together all intelligent creatures, and convert them into his own per- fection, through the instrumentalities of their free-will and their own exertions. And the consummation of all things will be the extinction of sin ; but whether it shall then be so abolished as never to revive again in the uni- verse does not belong to the present discourse to show. What relates, however, to the entire abolition of sin and the reformation of every soul, may be obscurely traced in many of the prophecies; for there we discover that the name of God is to be invoked by all, so that all shall serve him with one consent, that the reproach of con- tumely is to be taken away, and that there is to be no more sin, nor vain words, nor treacherous tongue. This may not indeed take place .with mankind in the present life, but be accomplished after they shall have been liberated from the body."
A century later, Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, advocated Universal Salvation in the plainest terms : "What there- fore is the scope of St. Paul's dissertation in this place ? That the nature of evil shall at last be wholly exterminated, and divine, immortal goodness embrace within itself every rational creature ; so that of all who are made by God, not one shall be excluded from his kingdom."
Diodorus, Bishop of Tarsus, in Silicia, A.D. 378 was of the same blessed faith. "The wicked," he says, " are to suffer, not eternal torment, but a punishment proportioned in length to the amount of their guilt; after which, they are to be happy without end." About the same time,
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lived Fabius Manus Victorinus. He maintained, that " Christ will regenerate all things ; through him all things will be purged, and return to eternal life."
Other learned, good, and influential men in those early days, believed in and taught this truth. I will name Titus, Bishop of Bostia; Basil the Great, Bishop of Cæsarea; Didymus the Blind, and the learned and powerful Jerome. In fact, most of the Christians, Ortho- dox and anti-Orthodox, in the first age of the Christian Era, entertained this Faith. The writers of those times speak of this Faith as though it was not questioned ; they offer no labored argument in its defence, and when they do refer to it, it is only incidentally. But darkness was rapidly covering the earth, and gross darkness the people. The enlightened and benevolent doctrine of the Restitution was not adapted to the savagism of the dark ages then threatening the world, and so in the year of . our Lord 553, at Constantinople, by the Fifth ŒEcumeni- cal Council, it was condemned. From that period till the Reformation of the Fourteenth century, the religions of the world corresponded with the ignorance and brutality that prevailed. Our wise, benevolent, and pure faith, not harmonizing with the savagism of the times, had but few adherents. But in the great religious awakening of the Fourteenth century, it was again entertained, and has been ever since gradually gaining in favor.
In A.D. 1650, Gerard Winstanley, an Englishman, in a book called, " Mystery of God," thus writes : "The whole creation of mankind shall be delivered from cor- ruption, bondage, death, and pain." He was persecuted for his trust in God as a Universal Savior, and thrown into prison. At the same time lived and labored William Earbury, an eminent preacher among the Independents.
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He was a defender of the same soul-cheering faith. He asked, " What gospel, what glad tidings is it to tell the world, that none can be saved but the elect and believers ? Christ came to save only the lost, giving the word of life to all men, that they might believe, a shutting all up in unbelief, that he might have mercy on all." " For the ministry of God shall be finished, fully known, and the angel swear by God, that time shall be no more; for all shall be taken up into eternity, unto God himself, and God shall be all in all." (Terror of Tythes, pages 175, 244.)
Another noble defender of the Restitution in those times, was Richard Coppin. He was charged with blas- phemy for believing in Universal Salvation, and he re- plied : "Whatever is the will of God is not blasphemy to affirm. The will of God is the salvation of all men, therefore to say that all men shall be saved is not blas- phemy." (Truth's Triumphs, page 7.) He confounded his opposers in discussion, which so enraged them, they had him imprisoned. This took place in 1656. At this time, a book by an unknown author appeared with this title : " Of the Torments of Hell ; The Foundation ; And the Pillars Thereof Discovered, Searched, Shaken and Ruined. With infallible proof that there is not to be punishment for the wicked after this life, for any to endure that shall not end." The author was a man of ability, and much reading. He gives Orthodoxy some pretty hard hits. This was written over two hundred years ago.
At the same time lived Jeremy White, chaplain to Pro- tector Cromwell. He published a book called, "The Restitution of All Things : or a vindication of the good- ness and grace of God, to be manifested at last in the re-
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covery of the whole creation out of their fall." He was truly a Christian man; his soul was imbued with the spirit of his faith. Dr. Thomas Burnet of that age, was of like Faith, and Lord Macauley in his " History of Eng- land," says he was a "clergyman of eminent genius, learning and virtue." In one of his works he writes, "J know not by what means it happens at present, that some divines of a cruel and fiery temper are extremely pleased with eternal and infinite punishment, and can hardly endure to have the point fairly examined and debated on both sides." There are some of that kind in the world now.
William Whiston, the well known translator of Jose- phus, was an unbeliever in endless misery. He wrote a book entitled, " The Eternity of Hell Torments Consid- ered." Archbishop Hare says, he was " a fair unblem- ished character; all his life he cultivated piety, virtue and good bearing." He succeeded Sir Isaac Newton as Professor of Mathematics, at Cambridge. In this book he offers some cogent arguments against eternal woe. R. Roach, another English clergyman, who flourished over an hundred years ago, says, "Then will the general redemption be accomplished, and the mediating office of the great High Priest be at an end, for he will then deliver up the kingdom thus completed to his Father, that 'God may be all in all.'" Bishop Warburton, the celebrated author of the "Divine Legation of Moses,' had no faith in ceaseless woe. He justly calls the preachers of that doctrine, " unmerciful doctors," " mer- ciless doctors."
But I have not time to cite more English testimony, that the doctrine of the Restitution has been long enter- tained by many of the purest, best, and most learned of
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that nation. I will cross over into Germany, and see if this divine sentiment has not been entertained in that enlightened land.
As early as 1590, Samuel Huber, Professor of Divinity in Wittenburg, was a believer in the Restitution, accord- ing to Spauheim, Professor of Divinity at Geneva. "We think," says the latter, " the opinion of Huber on this. subject absurd, who about the close of the last century. began to publish and defend a UNIVERSAL ELECTION OF ALL MEN IN CHRIST TO SALVATION." At the same early day our righteous faith had a talented, learned and pious advocate in John William Petersen. He was Pro- fessor of Poetry at Rostock, in 1677. He was also Superintendent at Lubic and Lunenburg, and Court preacher at Lutin. In 1700, he published a work in three volumes in defence of the Restitution, which was extensively read, and caused much excitement in Germany.
At the same time was published a book which has been widely circulated and extensively read. Itis entitled, "The everlasting Gospel," by Paul Siegvolk. It clearly and forcibly advocates the salvation of mankind. It was very popular in Germany, and has been republished at various times in different parts of Europe. It was pub- lished in this country as early as 1753. That our divine faith was widely diffused in those days, we learn from many other sources. In the Analytical Review, an Eng- lish periodical published in 1780, we find the following :
"The doctrine of the final happiness of mankind, which presents the prospect of the termination of all evil. and of a period in which the deep shades of misery and guilt, which have so long enveloped the universe, shall be forever dispelled, is so pleasing a speculation to a benevo-
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lent mind, that we do not wonder it meets with so many advocates. From the earliest period, we doubt not the belief of it has been secretly entertained by many, who, in the face of opposition and danger, had not the resolu- tion to avow it. Now, however, it has broken through every restriction, and walks abroad in every form that is adapted to convince the philosophic, to arouse the un- thinking, and to melt the tender."
These books, and others of like character, were widely circulated in Germany, and called the attention of the public to the benevolent faith advocated with so much learning and piety. An exciting controversy was the result; and learned men on both sides put forth all their strength for and against this controverted doctrine.
But I have not time for more about the history of Uni- versalism in Germany. Ever since the Reformation, that faith has been gaining adherents, and at the present time, it is almost universally entertained by the Protestants of that country. Says Dr. Dwight, in "Travels in North Germany," "The doctrine of endless punishment is almost universally rejected. I have seen but one person who believed it." Not only in Germany and England, but in Holland, Switzerland, France, Scotland, and in other parts of Europe, the doctrine of Universal Salva- tion prevailed at an early day, and at the present time is widely diffused. It exists more or less in all the Protestant denominations. There is no sect in Europe called Universalist, but the sentiment is found in all sects, and encounters very little opposition.
Immediately after this discussion, I commenced a long journey through Iowa. Lectured in Lyons, Marshall, Newton, Iowa City, Washington, and many other places Said a man in Marshall :
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"Do you think the assassin Booth can be saved ?" I answered : "Jesus said, ' I came to seek and save the lost.' 'They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.' And the apostle Paul teaches, that Christ came to save the chief of sinners. As it was the mission of our Savior to save the lost, the morally sick, the chief of sinners, I dare not say, even Booth cannot be saved. But if Orthodoxy is true, I had ten to one rather have Booth's chance for heaven than Mr. Lincoln's. The latter received his death wound without a moment's warning, and was not conscious an instant after the fatal bullet struck his head. He belonged to no church, was not a professor of religion ; and so according to Ortho- doxy, died impenitent, unregenerated, a sinner, and must now be in hell. But Booth lived one or two hours after he was wounded, and was conscious to the last moment of his life. And who knows but he repented of his great crime before he expired ? And if he did, ac- cording to Orthodoxy, he went straight to heaven. But if there is any truth in Orthodoxy, Mr. Lincoln had no chance whatever, for he died 'impenitent,' and is just as sure in hell as heis dead. If Partialism is true, about all murderers are saved, especially those who have the good luck to be hanged, while the murdered are lost, for in nine cases of every ten, the latter, being killed suddenly, without an intimation of their doom, and so have not time to say Lord save me,' are eternally lost ; while the former, the murderers, having timely warning of their fate, and special effort made for their regenera- tion, almost invariably swing from the gallows soundly converted, and so go from the gibbet to immortal glory.
" It takes Orthodoxy to translate the bloody criminal into a saint, and fit him for heaven between his mon-
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strous crime and the halter ; but Universalism is required to save the murdered, the victim of his iniquity. While I was living in St. Louis, a wretch by the name of Lamb, held with his own hands, his wife in the Mississippi river, till she was dead. He was arrested, confessed his guilt, was hung; and on the gallows said : ' I have a hope within me that bears me up - a hope that I shall live with God, and be happy with him, and that I shall sing his praise. I die with a trust in God.' And Dr. Ander- son, a Presbyterian, his spiritual adviser, published in the papers that he was 'satisfied of the reality of Lamb's penitence.' The murdered woman belonged to no church, had not 'got religion,' and so was banished from the murderer's hands to the devil, to be the victim of his diabolical cruelty eternally. But the incarnate fiend, whom the law called her husband, was transported a few months afterward, from the gallows to the third heaven, according to the creeds."
In one of my sermons in Washington, I spoke as fol- lows :
As man is susceptible of physical improvement, is he not also of intellectual and moral? Cannot the soul develop, grow, as well as the body? What a vast difference there is between the infant and he who has devoted years to intellectual and moral cul- ture. The soul is a germ; and, as the germ in the seed, under favorable circumstances, buds, blossoms, and yields a rich harvest, so this spiritual germ, if no obstruc- tions interdict, develops its heavenly proportions to perfect manhood. The race, like the individual, has its childhood, its youth and manhood. One individual, represents the race. As one progresses, all may. Sup- pose every human being who may walk the earth for the
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next five hundred years, should make intellectual and moral improvement, the great end and aim of life, all other pursuits subordinate to that one, what would be the consequence ? The long hoped for, and prayed for, Millenium would be ushered in - all would know the Lord from the least to the greatest -the lion and the lamb would lie down together. This glorious era is predicted by Holy Writ, and God's elder Scriptures. Revelation and nature unite in testifying that mankind, God's noblest and best work, and for whom the universe was made, are susceptible of infinite improvement, that they will shine brighter and brighter to the perfect day.
It may require more than five centuries to produce such results ; it probably will ; but eternity is before us. The race is in its dawn only. The morning twilight has just appeared. The darkness of barbarism still lingers in the horizon. The chains of intellectual and moral despotism are still clanking in our midst. But the race, as well as the individual, will reach noon-day. The sun of righteousness will mount the zenith, and disperse all darkness and melt all chains. Such characters as Moses, Homer, Plato, Lord Bacon, Shakspeare, Newton, Napo- leon, Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, Clay, Webster, Beecher, Ballou, Chapin, and a multitude of others in IN- TELLECT; and such as Socrates, St. John, St. Paul, Melancthon, Howard, Oberlin, Parker, and others too numerous to mention, in MORAL WORTH, indicate the in- tellectual and moral heights all may attain. They stand out in bold relief from the mass of mankind, indicating the capabilities of human nature. They are pioneers in the intellectual and moral field, and the ground they occupy will ere long be occupied by all. They are hea-
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cons on the rushing stream of life piloting humanity into the celestial haven.
The history of the earth and all therein and thereon, as revealed by science and history, illustrates the law of progress. This earth has been a theater of life for in- numerable ages-how long it is not for us to know. Remains of the distant part are embedded in the crust of the earth; and from them we learn, that from the first appearance of life in vegetable form, up to man, there has been gradual advancement. The order of unfolding seems to have been about thus : I. Gross mat- ter; 2. Mineral; 3. Marine Plants; 4. Fish; 5. Rep- tiles ; 6. Birds ; 7. Marsupial ; 8. Mammalia; 9. MAN, the flower, the crown, the lord of creation. All these classes are interlinked, one hand reaching up, and the other down, and all are ascending in the line of the spiral, up to man. Every succeeding class is supe- rior to the preceding, from the first to the last, and each is moving onward. The last type of the vegetable king- dom is infinitely superior to the first, and so of all the other classes. And man of the Sixteenth century is far superior to man of the First century. No miracle was wrought in bringing any of these species into existence ; no law of nature was violated, or suspended; but all, from the lowest grade up to man, were brought on to the stage of life according to perfect and immutable laws, emanating from the great Fountain of the Universe.
Mankind in their infancy were ignorant creatures ; as much below the Indians of the Rocky Mountains, intellectually and morally, as they are below us. They wandered, naked, in clans, like the Indians of the West, subsisting on fish, reptiles, and such animals as they could kill with their simple weapons, and on the sponta-
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neous productions of the earth, without shelter by night or protection from the burning sun or pelting storm.
Many centuries after, about the time Babylon was founded, though great advancement had been made, yet the mass of the people were still ignorant and degraded. There were a few enlightened minds, but the majority were enveloped in mental darkness, of which we can form but faint conception - fit materials for tyrants and lead- ers to make machines of and they freely used them for such sacriligiou's purposes. They were subject to their leader's will; were his bone and sinew; his battle-axe and shield. He was the head, they the body. At his will they suffered and toiled, lived and died, and when their oppressor's career closed, erected pyramids to per- petuate his fame and their shame. But little effort was made to enlighten and moralize the mass of mankind, for their masters well knew that ignorant men make the best tools. No advancement would have been attained under such unfavorable circumstances had not growth been natural to man.
If we trace the history of mankind during the rise and progress of the Chaldean, Babylonian, Persian and Roman empires up to the time Christ was on earth, we find, that though ignorance and degradation were prom- inent features of the civilization of those times, yet our hearts are made glad with clear evidence of human progress. True, the advancing tide was slow, the cur- rent sluggish ; sometimes obstacles arrested its progress, and even forced it back toward its source, but nature then redoubled her effort, swept away all obstacles, and pressed onward with her immortal freight to sunnier skies and fairer climes.
When the Christian Era opened, it was the golden age
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of antiquity. The purity of our Savior's life, his deep and fervent love for mankind, the beauty and live-giving energy of the precepts and truths he uttered, together with the goodness, zeal and extensive labors and suffer- ing: of his apostles and their associates, gave the human mind an impetus it had not before known.
The apostles and their coadjutors traversed the Ro- Inan empire, which included most of the then known world, and denounced Paganism, and every species of immorality, and called on the nations of the earth to worship the one living and true God, the maker and gov- ernor of the universe. They proclaimed, in obedience to their divine Master, that God was the FATHER OF MANKIND; that the latter compose one great BROTHER- HOOD, and are destined for IMMORTALITY, . PROGRESSION and HAPPINESS; and from these cardinal truths they drew these inferences and enforced them with a holy life and eloquent speech-that we should exercise brotherly kindness, general benevolence and charity, and aid each other in traveling the heavenly road.
Those holy men did not labor in vain. The human soul was quickened into higher life by the germinating power of truth ; and had the gospel been retained in its purity, and had the social and political condition of mankind been in a higher sphere of development, and had those favorable conditions continued to the present time, long ago the Millenium would have been ushered in. But the gospel was corrupted ; the social and polit- ical condition of mankind, though in advance of any previous period, was in a deplorable state. The Roman heart was rotten, the Roman empire was corrupt, and before Christianity was promulgated therein to much extent, the empire was tottering on its throne, and
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shaking from center to circumference. And to add to the terrors and disasters of the times, floods of bar- barians came rushing from the North, and Saracens from the East, like the lava from Vesuvius that over- whelmed Herculaneum and Pompeii, and buried the empire and civilization beneath the flood and almost ex- tinguished the light and life of Christianity. Those were the darkest days the world had seen for many a century. It was the breaking up of the old civiliza- tion.
The world then received a check from which it was d long time in recovering; but its innate tendency to move onward, finally overcame the mountains that man's de- pravity and folly had thrown in its way, and after the lapse of several centuries it again merged into the light of science and religion.
The morning twilight which succeeded that long night of anarchy, priestly rule and superstition, dawned on the world in the Fourteenth century. Intellect that had slumbered for ages began to throw off its lethargy. Uni- versities sprang up in Europe. Science, literature and religion began to be studied. Old theories were looked into and questioned; and then the martyr's fires were rekindled by the conservatives of that age; for every age has a class who love to stand up to their ears in mud at their old landmarks, threatening all with temporal ruin or eternal damnation, or both, who make an effort to get out of the filth into the pure air and sunshine of heaven. This old hunkerism is abhorrent, whether in church, state, or literature. It would repress the ener- gies of the world. Our motto should be - go where the stream of truth bears us, regardless of consequence ; they
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should not be feared. Error and ignorance only are real enemies.
Those early pioneers in the domain of truth, paid dear for their independence and wisdom ; many of whom were burned at the stake or incarcerated in dungeons. But the truths they uttered were not so easily killed or imprisoned. A pious poet of those times speaking of the disinterment and scattering of Wickliffe's ashes on the Avon, utters this prophetic language :
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