# Our New Departure (Brooks)/Chapter 2

What is the net result? This is the question after every battle. It is equally the question after every struggle of whatever sort, and especially after every moral or religious contest, or as there comes a time in its progress for a pause and a survey of the field. Naturally, therefore, it is the question that comes to us at the opening of our second century.
Theologically, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, the result of our work is surprising. Scarcely less surprising is the change which, out of a handful of unlettered ministers and scattered believers, during a period comparatively so short, and against hostile influences so numerous and powerful, has made us in standing and resources what, as a church, we to-day are. But what of moral and spiritual results? What of the religious effectiveness of our methods and motives? Christ came a quickening spirit, to be the world's Saviour; and Christianity, as his instrument, aims steadily at one purpose, viz., the religious awakening and salvation of souls. Every church, therefore, that is really a Church of Christ, stands invested with this meaning; and so far as it fails in this respect, whatever else it may do, it fails in its final design. Our net result in this respect, then, what is it?
In part, it is a result every way creditable. To multitudes, Universalism has been a ministry of divine awakening and power. Oppressed, many of them despairing, amidst the gloom and discouragements of the traditional creeds, or walking in the darkness of unbelief, or living in indifference or sin, its light has shone upon them, and suddenly they have found themselves in a new world. The thought of God has grown beautiful to them. Christ has become more precious. A new meaning has glorified ​the cross, and sent home the pathos of its appeals to their hearts. Duty has become more attractive; sin more repugnant; prayer a privilege and a strength of which they had never dreamed; religion an unspeakable joy. "All their lifetime subject to bondage," trembling at the thought of death, or asking with anxious and moaning hearts, Are our beloved safe? they have seen heaven opened, as it were a fresh revelation, disclosing its certain reunions and the blessedness of God's perfect service, and have been attracted towards God and the redeemed in a holier life. Others, born in the atmosphere of Universalism and nurtured in its spirit, have illustrated its influence as an element of Christian culture, as they have knelt from their youth at the feet of the Saviour, saying, like Samuel, "Speak, Lord; thy servant heareth thee," and giving themselves to the work of the Church. A rich record Universalism has made for itself in these respects; and could we but see the long procession of those—young, middle-aged, and old—stretching through the past hundred years, who have thus been reached and benefited by it, we should need no other evidence that God is in it.
But while this is one side—and a very gratifying side—of the case, and while we thus have many reasons to be proud of Universalism and of the Universalist Church, and to thank God for what they have done, we cannot close our eyes to the fact that, religiously, the result of our first century's work is not all we could wish. We are improving in this particular, and are every year becoming a more religious people, with more of insight and spiritual life. But our failure at this point is none the less the one great occasion of sorrow to many of our ministers and the more thoughtful of our people, as they look over the field and sum up the outcome of our labors; nor is it to be concealed that many are anxiously asking, What is the explanation? As concerns all the moralities, respectabilities, and charities of life, Universalists may challenge comparison anywhere. The benevolence of their faith broadens their sympathies, and—despite some mischievous speculations which will be duly noticed in a future chapter—its philosophy of moral obligation and award cultivates an ethical conscience, so ​that, as a class, they are conspicuous in these regards. But when we look for what is deeper and more experimental, to an extent at all corresponding, we do not find it.
Looking outside what we have been accustomed to call our denomination, but what we are hereafter to designate as our Church, we discover that multitudes who say they believe Universalism are identifying themselves with other churches, helping to support what they profess to regard as false; and still worse, if possible, other like multitudes are content to have no religious associations, and with their children, are helping to swell the number of those who enjoy the blessings of our Christian institutions, but do nothing for their support.
And looking within the lines of our organization, while we can truthfully say that no church shows a higher average of people upright in business, kind to the poor, every way reputable, it cannot be said that devout affections and a religious conscience are by any means general among us. We are not a praying people—that is, in the sense in which this phrase is commonly employed. Praying Universalists, in this sense, there are, many of them; how many there are who pray in the voiceless secrecy of their communion with God, it is for no human pen to assume to say. But the custom of family, social, or stated private prayer does not, to any considerable extent, prevail among us, because there is no prevailing sense of duty in these directions; and how rare it is to find those in our congregations who can be called to lead in public prayer, we all know. We have opinion rather than faith; more nominal assent than spiritual impulse or purpose. Our parishes far outnumber our churches; and where churches exist, they, as the rule, are very small, with a male membership lamentably disproportionate to that of the congregations. And then look abroad: what mean the so-called Universalist societies—alas, so many of them!—dead or dormant? What mean the Universalist meeting-houses sold, or rented, or standing unused, given up to decay, monuments to our dishonor? And last, but not least, what mean the fields where for years Universalism—or what has borne that name—has been preached to no visible effect in the spiritual vitality of the people, ​and only to result in a sickly and struggling life for the congregations, or in final wreck and dispersion? For two successive years, not long since, I spent several vacation Sundays with one of our oldest parishes in New England, trying to make the dead bones live. The community is a thriving one, and the Universalists, so-called, have all the advantage of numbers, wealth, and position. But having sold their house of worship, the most of them first allowed themselves to be bodily transferred to an attempt to build up a Unitarian society; and this experiment having failed, they have since sunk into comparative apathy, and though having occasional preaching, seemed, the last I heard of them, to be dying of spiritual inanition. Nor, unfortunately, is this a solitary case—so far as the substantive facts of apathy and inanition are concerned. The question presses, then, What mean these things? And still further, how are we to account for the religious deadness and the indisposition to do anything for the organization of parishes, or the support of public worship, in so many sections where a nominal Universalism widely prevails? There are counties in my native state (New Hampshire), where what is called Universalism may almost be said to be the prevalent form of religious thought, and where there is no lack of pecuniary ability, which are complete wastes as regards any active Christian effort, save as an occasional Sunday's preaching may intermit the dearth. Other states show similar districts.
These are some of the facts we are compelled to contemplate. They must, there being so many of them, have some common meaning. What is it? I hesitate to say it; but I do not see how we can avoid the conclusion, that what large numbers of people hold as Universalism is thus practically proved to lack penetrative, awakening, mastering power. Those who profess it are in no way possessed by it. They are not melted or smitten, are not "pricked in heart," or brought to their knees by it. It is of the head,—not of the deepest or inmost life. It begets no intensity of conviction. It fills with no sense of religious obligation. It prostrates with no consciousness of sin. It stirs to no penitence. It inspires no consecration. In a word, it fails to save souls.
​These are hard things for me to say. But, unfortunately, they are indisputable facts—the reverse side of the net result of our first hundred years' labor. I shall, no doubt, be thought by some of my brethren injudicious,—perhaps shall be charged by others with overdrawing, because I state them so unreservedly. But we have long enough talked about them in private, and hinted at them in our public utterances. The time has come for them to be plainly set forth, and for the probe to be fearlessly applied, to reveal their cause or causes. I am not unaware, of course, that statements so free are likely to be used to our disadvantage by unscrupulous sectarists, who will give no attention, for themselves or others, to the explanations which are to follow; and I shall, no doubt, be represented as having said that Universalism is religiously a failure, with no power to save souls. But whoever so represents me, directly or by implication, will deliberately violate the ninth commandment, and allege what I neither say nor mean. As an honest man, I could no longer preach nor advocate Universalism, if I could either make or believe any such statement. While, however, fully recognizing this liability to a misrepresentation of the statement which I really make, it has not seemed to me any reason why it should be withheld or qualified. It is a cowardly friendship for any truth that fears to deal honestly with its hinderances, or to point out the errors and mistakes of its nominal adherents, lest some enemy should be dishonest enough to pervert or misrepresent what may be said. The only way to treat a disease is, first of all, to face it at its worst, and then to look after its remedy.
Some of the causes of the state of things I have glanced at are common to our human nature, without regard to sect or creed. They are such, therefore, as are afflicting all churches, more or less, with the evils complained of. Every denomination has its wayside hearers, its stony ground, its thorny ground, as well as its good ground. Regarding other churches at a distance and from the outside, everything may appear roseate as to their earnestness and spirituality; but going inside, we find matters quite different, and learn that they have their lacks and their failures as ​well as we: a statement, as I once made it in substance from the pulpit, emphatically indorsed by an Episcopal clergyman who heard it, and that was attested with equal emphasis, some years ago, by a New England minister who left the Unitarians to join the Orthodox, and more recently by a good, but unstable brother, now deceased, who went from us to the Swedenborgians, expecting to find them far more spiritual than we, but in a year or two returned, wofully disappointed.
The whole history of religious truth abounds in just such two-sided results as we have to confess. It was so with the ministry even of the apostles. Not only were there those who were hearers and not doers of the word, but there were those who heard and believed only to misapprehend, and who, failing to perceive the guiding and cleansing purpose of what they nominally received, were made rather worse than better. The Epistles abound with references and exhortations which show that there were such in all the early churches: those to whom their new Christian freedom meant only license, and who, released from their old motives, and failing to be reached by the new, were morally lawless, with no positive sense of obligation anywhere. As the result, in part, what now are the very fields in which Christianity was first preached? Moral wastes, giving no sign in the life of the people of the divine ministry of Christ, or of the heroic labors of apostles, by which the ground has since been hallowed to every Christian heart. Does it, therefore, follow that Christianity is not of God? And following it down, has Christianity even yet altogether ceased to be misapprehended, or to be held in unrighteousness? Or, would it be too much to say of forms of Christianity which the most 'evangelical' will admit come within that definition, that what large numbers thus hold to be Christianity is practically proved unequal to the work of saving souls? The Reformation furnished evidence to the same effect. Numerous extravagances of doctrine and action followed the emancipation of religious thought from its long thraldom. Luther himself seems not always to have discriminated very closely between non-allegiance to the authority of the Church, and non-allegiance to the authority of God's Word; and as he contem​plated the crudities and fanaticisms of opinion, and the moral looseness and lawlessness growing out of the causes which he had been the means of setting in operation, he is said to have wrung his hands at times in his distress and mortification, almost repenting what he had done. The early annals of Methodism give similar witness. Charles Wesley confesses himself "much discouraged by the disorderly walking of some who have given the adversary occasion to blaspheme," and records that many insisted "that a part of their Christian calling is a liberty from obeying, not liberty to obey; "and John Wesley had much trouble with "disorderly walkers," of some of whom he said that "the spirit of Ham, if not of Korah, fully possessed them;" while of others, his biographer records that they "fell into extravagant notions, and ways of expression, more proper to be heard in Bedlam than in a religious society."
These are but examples of a general rule. Every movement towards a fresh statement of truth, while attracting some who will catch its spirit and be helped by it to a better life, is sure to attract others who will do neither. Some, more or less correctly perceiving it intellectually, will hold it only as a lifeless theory, a lump of so much lead in the brain, and still others, totally misapprehending it, will accept it only as an occasion of license, or of indifference and neglect. Nor is any doctrine, claiming to be truth, responsible for such consequences, except as they are the clear and legitimate fruit of some principle essential in it. Paul thanked God for the success of his labors, though what he preached was to some "a savor of death unto death." Preaching what he believed to be the truth, he felt that he and his labors were approved of God, though some did hear only to disbelieve, or to believe in a misunderstanding of the new faith, and thus to be injured rather than benefited. And this is the law always. "What though some were faithless to their trust?" asked Paul, concerning the Jews. "Shall their faithlessness destroy the faithfulness of God?" (Rom. iii. 3, Conybeare & Howson's Version.) All truth is liable to perversion, misconstruction, abuse. But the truth ​is none the less the truth on account of either of these things, and is to be preached, notwithstanding—because it is the truth, and because it is sure, in time, to purge itself of all such concomitants.
There are, moreover, some special considerations to be taken into account in our case, aside from the point of chief interest in it.
In the first place, it must not be forgotten how much this Universalist movement involves. It is commonly thought of as a mere change of opinion concerning a single doctrine. But it is far more than this. It is a breaking up of all the established habits of religious thinking. Still holding on to God and Christ and the Bible, it is a new theory of them all; a reconstruction of the whole system of Christian theology, substituting new principles of action, appealing to a new set of motives, making life, as to its foundation and spirit, a totally different thing. And this being so, consider how much ground is thus covered, and how many are the conditions, alike as to what must be done and what must be undone, which have to be fulfilled before Universalism can become thoroughly appreciated, and so be fairly put into life. No ship, leaving its anchorage, at once gets the wind and goes straight on its course. It always drifts more or less before the canvas sets, and the rudder makes itself felt. So, by similar necessities, in every moral and intellectual movement. It takes time for new principles fully to assert themselves; for loosened minds to get wonted to freer and broader channels; for heart and conscience to feel the pressure of higher appeals, and thus for the new motives to obtain mastery.
Then, too, it must be borne in mind how, from the first up to a very recent period, we have been arguing and fighting,—important employments, without which we could not have leavened and modified religious opinion as we have, but not employments favorable to spiritual culture, or to a high order of religious life. For a long time, on this account, what passed under the name of Universalism,—what many preachers exclusively preached, and what solely filled far too many pews, was simply anti-orthodoxy. It had little or no sympathy with any affirmative faith, and as little ​interest in any positive practical Christian aims. It cared only to deny and argue and pull down, and began to lose whatever life or zeal it had, as soon as labor was turned towards personal spiritual experience, or definite religious ends. It and its dying out among us furnish the sufficient explanation for many of the so-called Universalist meeting-houses transferred, or surrendered to decay, and for many of the nominal Universalist societies dead or dormant.
Another thing in this same direction: Because of this antagonistic and controversial attitude to which we were for years in part compelled, and which, unfortunately for us, this anti-orthodoxy still further intensified, it is to be considered what kind of material, for a time, with much that was better, drifted into formal connection with us—some of it coarse, some of it corrupt, all of it eager only for a game of fisticuffs with 'our opposers,' without religious sensibility or purpose, and, wherever it touched, poisonous and destructive to every best interest of our cause. It is the penalty of all new movements to take along more or less such material,—as every freshet gathers into its current all kinds of lumber and rubbish as it sweeps along. But the rubbish is not the stream. As little does this sort of material make part really of any worthy movement which may, for a season, be cursed with it. But it is a curse, none the less; and this curse, we, like others, have not failed to experience.
Nor is this all. It must be remembered how widely Universalism has been compelled to do its work, hindered and neutralized by the influence and false education of 'orthodoxy.' "I know," said a little four-years-old son of one of our ministers, as his Sunday school teacher was talking with his class about bad boys, "I know what becomes of bad boys. They go to hell, and are burned up forever." And this talk from a child of one of our ministers—and a minister most watchful over his children and their associations, well illustrates how the whole atmosphere of society has been pervaded by the doctrines and spirit of the traditional creeds. Universalism has not been permitted to assert itself as an element of Christian nurture uncontaminated by these creeds, even in our own homes. What has been ​the consequence? With numerous other mischievous impressions, the public mind has been saturated with the idea that were it not for hell, and our exposure to endless woe, there would be no good reason why we should be religious, or at all concerned in religious work. Of course, the fear of hell being removed, people so trained have had little or no conception of any other motive sufficient to control them. What wonder, then, that Universalism has not been so successful as, under other circumstances, it might have been in lifting the popular mind up to the level of its appeals, and so in putting its own spirit and motives into those theoretically converted to its doctrines? And what have we, really, in much of the neglect and irreligion ordinarily charged to the account of Universalism, but the direct harvest of 'orthodox' training, or of the principles which it has sown and tilled? Nor is it a fact to pass without mention here, that the Universalism of large numbers who have dishonored our name has been wholly learned from the slanders of 'evangelical' pulpits. Such pulpits, falsely representing the teachings of Universalism to be what they never were, have sent away the profane and the vicious with the impression that Universalism is favorable to their low and vicious life, and they have said, If this is Universalism, then we are Universalists; and we have had to bear the odium of their professed friendship, though they knew no more of Universalism than Simon the sorcerer knew of the Gospel, and were without even so much of right to bear its name as he had to call himself a Christain.
Still further: Until within a few years, comparatively, we have been without any system of religious culture and work. In the reaction of our denominational fathers from the doctrines they renounced, there was, naturally,—almost unavoidably,—a quite general reaction from all existing religious methods. Prayer-meetings, the church, the Sunday school, tracts, missionary societies, family prayer, a formal profession of religion, everything but the simple service of preaching, was, to a wide extent, opposed, or, if not opposed, ridiculed or neglected, as savoring of cant, fanaticism, or priestcraft. The pendulum had begun to return from this mischievous reaction just before I entered the ministry; ​but its consequences long continued, and even now have not wholly ceased. If there are to be religious results, there must necessarily be some system of means to secure them. So long lacking any such system, then, and not simply lacking, but to a large extent deriding and fighting against it, how could it be but that the consequences should be religiously disastrous to us?
Particularly must it be taken into account, in this connection, to how small an extent we have had any thorough and systematic training of our children, even in the doctrines of the Bible as we understand them,—much less with reference to religious obligation and experience, and a distinctively religious life. Some of them, from their very infancy, have been carefully and prayerfully educated in Universalism, not only theoretically, but as a religious power: and how many such have anywhere failed to be devout, earnest, consecrated men and women? But as the rule, has it not been thought sufficient that children growing up in our homes should be trained in a general way to respect God and the Bible and the Sabbath, and to be kind, honest, truthful, morally upright, and when this has been done, have they not been left to themselves as to anything else? And though we have had Sabbath schools, and have come of late years, almost universally, to institute them, as a matter of course, wherever we have had established congregations, has it not been equally the rule, up to a very recent period, even if it is not the fact quite so widely now, that they have taught Jewish history, Scripture biography and geography, with some occasional smattering of doctrine, and some talk about being good, leaving the more vital and spiritual applications of our truth to the conscience and the heart with comparatively little attention? Is it, then, very strange that such sowing has not resulted in the best religious harvests?
All these things have unquestionably had their importance in our case, and they severally serve to explain, in part, the failure in purely religious results which we are now noting. But the consideration which, as I believe, alone goes to the root of the matter, and explains, as none of these does, what is saddest and most perplexing in this state of ​things, is yet to be mentioned. It is, that there has been among us a wide-spread lack of sufficiently serious views of irreligion and sin as related to God and the inmost life of souls—of which a chapter further on will duly treat. As the consequence, all the effects of sin have, to a similar extent, been supposed to end with the body, and Universalism has thus been apprehended as simply a proclamation that all souls, at death, however they may have lived, pass at once to certain felicity, without regard to any conditions of faith, character, or effort here.
Under any circumstances, it was inevitable, as was just now intimated, considering in what ideas the people had so long been educated, that the announcement that there is no endless hell should seem to some minds to remove all imperative reason for religious living, however conditioned or qualified salvation might have been. In a sense, motives are the nerves of life; and it is obvious that, under no circumstances, could it be a light thing, or a task wholly unattended with danger, to take out from our physical frames one set of nerves and substitute another. A child brutalized under a régime of kicks and blows does not at once and readily appreciate the force of purely moral influence. At the best, therefore, it was inevitable that large numbers, because of their false and pernicious 'orthodox' education, on becoming convinced by Universalist argument to the negative extent of believing that there is no endless woe to be afraid of, should feel that the strain of religious motive was loosened, and that they were somewhat more at liberty, if they so pleased, to take things easily, and to give only so much attention to religion as they might find convenient, or as might seem to them needful to be respectable. There could not be such a transition without something of immediate moral harm. But when it came to be so almost universally understood that Universalism means not simply that there is no endless punishment, but that there is absolutely nothing for even the most sinful to be anxious about on the other side of death,—that live as negligently, or as wickedly, as one may here, it makes no difference as to his immediate felicity when he dies, it is not surprising—at least, to me—that the effect should be, religiously, very ​unfavorable, and that we should see what we have seen, and still do see, of listlessness and unconcern.
Those there have been, indeed, holding this doctrine, who have been among the saintliest and most consecrated souls that ever blessed the world with their presence—just as there have been such among the believers of the terrible doctrines of 'orthodoxy.' But these last are no examples of what such doctrines are fitted to make their believers,—only examples of what those believing these doctrines, but feeding upon the truth associated with them, may become in spite of them—as even in the most poisonous flower the bee finds that which it transmutes into honey. And for much the same reason, never thinking of reward or punishment,—only living in habitual communion with the best and sweetest things in the Gospel, these saintly and consecrated souls among the disciples of this theory which confines all the peril of sin to this world, and which puts even the most profane and unbelieving directly into heaven at the moment of death, in no way illustrate the natural tendency of such a belief,—only illustrate what power there is in strong religious instincts, and a positive sympathy with God and the Saviour, to neutralize even very mischievous error, and to come to beautiful spiritual flower and fruit in spite of it.
If we are to test the real influence practically of such a theory, we must look to those on quite another moral level. And taking the world as it is, we cannot convince men that there is actually no peril in sin beyond this life, and that there are no conditions of salvation there to be here fulfilled,—that no matter how badly they live, or what they neglect, they will certainly slough off all unpleasant consequences of their misconduct with the body the instant they die, and go straight to glory, faring just as well as though they had lived the most self-denying and Christian life, without paralyzing their spiritual concern, and leaving them to be swayed as appetite, or the supposed interests or pleasures of this world, may suggest. Even those who think somewhat of their highest obligations are prone to put off any decided step religiously till circumstances shall be somehow more favorable, or till sometime when, as they ​think, it will be easier for them to make the effort or the sacrifices required. Satisfy even them, therefore, that they have only to wait till they die, to find themselves 'all right' without any effort on their part, and, in many cases of every hundred, they will say, Why trouble ourselves about what is then so certainly to take care of itself? And, if even such will be so affected, how much more those who seldom give a moment's thought to their religious duties, save as they occasionally think what they are hereafter likely to suffer on account of their neglect!
It is true that every day is a day of reckoning, under the moral government of God, and that whoever chooses a life of worldliness or sin is making a great mistake, every day attested in his or her experience as a soul. It is no less true that every day of a saintly life is its own sufficient compensation, and that one who has attained the elevation of such a life never stops to think what he or she is to get for it hereafter. "The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways; and a good man shall be satisfied from himself." And, these things being so, it is very easy to say what should be, and how people ought to live with no thought of consequences after death, certain that every day's living pays for itself. But, as the fact, people do not so live without regard to consequences. As the fact, the less one has of spiritual impulse and culture, the more he depends upon consequences to determine his choice towards good. As the fact, if men are to be up and doing, they must feel that they have something at stake. So it ever has been, as all experience testifies; and so, by every law or theory of motive upon which men are most accustomed to act, it ever must be. Even with reference to this world, as people average, they will not work unless some necessity is laid upon them; and, however superior to such stimulus some of rare constitution, or of a high order of spiritual development, may be, the mass of mankind, tempted and dragged down as they are by the immediate solicitations of material and sensual appeals, will not, in affairs of the soul, rise so far above the ordinary plane of motive as to deny themselves, and renounce their easy indulgence or unconcern, and put themselves to struggle and effort towards a ​better life, except as the spur of consequences presses into them, and they are compelled to feel that, hereafter and always, as here, what they shall be must depend, under God, wholly upon themselves, and depend there, for a period no one can say how long, upon what they are and do here.
Had there been any room for doubt on this point before, the result of our experience would render any further doubt impossible. The several considerations recited by way of explaining the absence of the religious results we fain would see, but do not, at the close of our first hundred years, are, as has been said, important in their place; and each of them does something—some of them do a great deal—to solve the problem presented us. But when we have made the most possible out of the explanations thus furnished, there still remains much in our condition that is not touched; and this, as a large majority of our most thoughtful ministers and people have unquestionably come to believe, is to be directly charged to the account of the idea of certain immediate salvation at death without regard to conduct or character. Not that it is meant to say that the absence of any such idea would have saved us from all which we now have to deprecate. Not by any means that it is designed even to intimate that the idea of the continuity of character, and of responsibility for it, beyond death, necessarily insures religious life. We have all known persons and congregations theoretically committed to this doctrine, who were very far from being patterns of religious devotion, or even of moral uprightness. As no opinion, however false, will make all who avow it bad, so neither will any opinion, however true, spiritually vitalize all who hold it. The question in respect to all moral or religious ideas is, first, as to their truth, and then as to their general tendency, their natural and legitimate results. And what it is intended here to say is only this—that the natural tendency of the idea referred to has been to spiritual lethargy and unconcern, and that, had more philosophical and scriptural convictions concerning sin and its consequences prevailed instead of it, results more favorable would doubtless now be seen. This idea, it is meant to say, has taken away the stimulus of necessity as a ​motive to religious interest or effort. It has fostered the impression that such interest or effort is entirely a matter at our private option, since it has taught those accepting it that, if they preferred to serve the world, or sin, willing to take the consequences here, they would be just as well off at death. It has thus begotten a false sense of security. It has been an opiate, lulling to slumber a religious conscience. It has enervated religious force; weakened the sense of religious responsibility; relaxed the strenuousness of religious inducement; undermined religious life; and—mourning, as we have such occasion to mourn, over Universalist societies once thriving (as it was thought), now apathetic or dead,—over Universalist meeting-houses sold, rented, or going to decay,—over nominal Universalist believers, religiously sluggish and unconcerned,—over all that tells religiously to the dishonor of our Church, and seems to attest the failure of Universalism itself as a religious power,—we are unmistakably pointed to this idea as the most fatal and effective among the causes which have wrought to produce this state of things. All our waste and desolate fields, so far as I know, are fields where this idea has reigned. In a word, the doctrine of a fixed and unconditional salvation, certain for all at death, has had a fair trial in our history, and the verdict is, Tekel. It has been weighed in the balances, and found wanting.
I hold in high respect—some of them, in warm and affectionate regard—the brethren who are still supposed to entertain this doctrine. In speaking of it, I would not even in seeming violate any demand of love or courtesy towards them. But I have no words to express my profound and growing conviction as to what this theory has been as a mischievous element in the life of our Church. Nor can I sufficiently put into language the intensity of my conviction that, while the largest liberty of thought and speech is to be maintained, we owe it to ourselves, and all that is at stake in the salvation of souls, to have it henceforth everywhere understood that Universalism means, and that the Universalist Church stands for, no such thing.
Nor am I alone in this conviction. With different degrees of intensity, it has come to be the prevailing conviction ​among us. Should it be so much as a question, then, what we will do? Surveying the field, and summing up the net result religiously of our first century, are we not imperatively called to a new departure, as we are entering upon another stage in our history?—a departure that will duly emphasize our now general conviction that salvation is offered, not secured, except as each soul complies with the conditions on which God has planned it for His children, and thus a departure that will henceforth make Universalism a call to activity, under the lead of Christ, in co-operation with God, and not a proclamation of results to be somehow wrought out by Christ, because unconditionally decreed by God, with which we have nothing to do.
I am sure I cannot err in saying that there is no thoughtful Universalist who would not be unspeakably saddened if, forecasting the horoscope of the next hundred years, he should see only a similar net result as we now have to contemplate. Thank God, he would exclaim, for any good our Church may have done, but, alas! we do not touch the vital spot; the great work to which every church of Christ is appointed in his behalf is left undone. Shall we hesitate, then, to change the administration of the truth given us, so as to touch this vital spot, and do Christ's great work? Our truth remains unchallenged. Everything proclaims it true; and there is no occasion to doubt or to distrust it. We have only erred in administering it. The sublime anthem of a complete salvation, written of God, is still to be chanted amidst the discords of sin and sorrow in our world, and we are to lead the chorus. It is only required that we pitch it to another key-note. Never before, though our net result is not all we ought to witness, have we had so much reason as now to thank God and take courage. All thought, all philosophy, all theology, all the best life of the time, is tending in our direction. Considering ourselves, moreover, not only are we greatly increased in numbers: we are more compact, better organized, more definite in aim, better equipped in means, wiser and more resolute in methods than ever before; and, better than all the rest, we are ripening morally, and deepening and becoming more alive spiritually. It is only needed that, committing ourselves ​to this New Departure, we go forward, mighty in the power of our great truth as thus better administered, and working so as to secure God's blessing, in order that we may effectually retrieve any mistakes or omissions of the past, and be the conquering and redeeming Church God is inviting us to become.