# Our New Departure (Brooks)/Chapter 1

Every live movement, in proportion as it is alive, enlarges as it proceeds. And so enlarging, it necessarily creates constantly new circumstances, out of which grow fresh demands.
The important question concerning every such movement, therefore, is, How far will it successively adjust itself to these new circumstances, and meet these fresh demands? On the answer to this question, under God, the final breadth and power of the movement wholly depend.
Principles never change. Neither do the ultimate purposes of any enterprise whose relations and issues have, at the outset, been fully perceived. But methods, instruments, directions of labor, bases of operation must perpetually change, or weakness and failure ensue. No wise commander adheres to any line of march save only with reference to his objective point. His tactics vary with the progress and varying exigencies of the campaign. Every day he studies the situation, to determine his strategy accordingly. New departures, by flank, detour, or advance, are made after every fight. How else do campaigns end in victory? Or, who doubts the consequence should any commander obstinately persist that, as he began, so, in every particular, he must push on? As little is victory possible for any movement that aims at growth or conquest, except on similar terms.
​The Universalist movement is no exception to these necessities. Of the nature or importance of this movement it is not requisite here to speak at length. It is enough to say that no reasonable words can exaggerate what it is, what it has done, or what it may do. Broadly viewed, it is, intellectually and morally, the grandest movement of these last centuries. Since Luther, there is nothing comparable to it. It was the resurrection of the long-slumbering moral consciousness of the Church. It was reason and common sense once more re-asserting themselves amidst the contradictions and absurdities of the creeds. Beginning as a protest of the uneducated popular heart against the cold and cruel scholasticism of the traditional theology, and providentially designed to give the world a more humane and harmonious interpretation of the Gospel, it has swept, a modifying and reconstructive power, through the realm of opinion, and spread as a subtile influence, for the most part unrecognized, but none the less actual, permeating society with broader principles, and a tenderer and more sympathetic spirit, to an extent that no human foresight could have dared anticipate. When John Murray was being stoned in Boston, or when his friends in Gloucester, or, later still, the handful of Universalists in New Hampshire, were battling before the courts for their rights as a distinct denomination, had some one ventured to predict that in the year 1870 Universalism would have so leavened the country, including even the churches, or that the Universalist Church of America would to-day be what it is in all the elements of Christian power, none would have been more ready than the Universalists themselves to pronounce him wildly visionary. What has thus been realized, seen and unseen, considering the circumstances, is almost without parallel. All honor to those who, in any way, have helped to make the movement thus potent. A brave and sturdy company, for the most part, they have been. Seldom has any work had workmen braver, or more deserving the world's remembrance.
But, exalted as are the terms in which this movement is to be spoken of, and much as all interested in it have occasion to be proud of the record which, in most respects, it ​has made for itself, it is obvious, in the nature of the case, that, if it is to continue effective, its methods must change with the changed circumstances it has helped to create. What has been cannot suffice for what is, or is to be; nor can the experiment of making it suffice be insisted on, except at the peril of the whole movement as thus far organized.
At first, our work was of necessity controversial. Occupied as the religious field was, our call was to assail and denounce—to oppose, dispute, pull down. We were nothing if not aggressive. As the consequence, we have arraigned, discussed and controverted the old theology as none others have been willing to do. We have exposed its sophisms; have made manifest its inconsistencies and contradictions; have denounced the grossness of its barbarous principles, and the fallacy of its narrow assumptions. We have wrested from it the Scriptures it has misapplied, and have demonstrated by our reiterated expositions—reiterated, as some have thought, to very weariness—how positively the Bible announces quite other conclusions. We have shown how reason and conscience, and nature and Providence, and every humane instinct, array themselves against it. In few words, we have so kept in agitation this entire question of God, and man, and destiny, in all its intellectual, moral, and scriptural aspects and relations, as to compel the public attention to it. We have had allies, it is true. We readily concede all that can be justly claimed for them. But, without stopping now to enumerate them, or to analyze the precise ratio of their and our comparative influence, it is not too much to allege that we have accomplished more than any other one agency—probably more than all other agencies combined. There could have been no Ward Beecher without Hosea Ballou. The result is obvious. That single name—Ward Beecher—better symbolizes it than whole volumes could describe it. 'Orthodoxy' still has its nominal believers—many of them; and considerable numbers, despite the growing breadth and liberality, adhere immovably to the ancient standards. Dr. Hodge's "Systematic Theology," and the recent action of little knots of ministers in various localities, are among the latest, as they ​are sufficient, witnesses of this; and, looking at catechisms and text-books, we may still find many of them as harsh as ever. But the sway of the sacrificial system is none the less broken. Dr. Hodge's book and the ministerial demonstrations no doubt have sympathizers; and there are those who are satisfied with the catechisms and the text-books, or they could not hold their place; but they are anachronisms, nevertheless—as little in keeping with the existing drift of popular and church thought as Dr. Emmons's cocked hat and knee-breeches, if to-day reproduced, would be with the present style of dress, or as some extinct monster of the Silurian epoch, should it return to perambulate our city streets, would be with the life amidst which it would walk. Speaking of those portions of the country where our—and other—modifying influences have really asserted themselves, how many minds, at all considerate, do not now revolt from the doctrines which Dr. Hodge is so grimly re-affirming? How many are now affrighted with visions of God's implacable wrath, or with the smoke and flames of an endless hell? How many, who actually think of God at all, now ever think of Him as an arbitrary Sovereign, creating souls on purpose to damn them forever, or as a Being who is weakly permitting the larger portion of His creation to drift to helpless ruin? Notwithstanding the creeds and catechisms, He is now practically thought of as the merciful Friend and Father of all; and the number of intelligent people—in the fields referred to—who, without question or reservation, believe in the absolute endlessness of sin and suffering, is comparatively very small. What is the significance of the ministerial demonstrations,—so far as they have any significance,—except that they point to these facts? Perhaps the state of the public mind, in the churches and out, in these respects, has never before been put to so significant a test as by the recent books of George Macdonald, especially his "Robert Falconer." This book is an express onslaught against all that is characteristic in 'orthodoxy' and is not only saturated with the spirit of Universalism, but is full of vigorous and unanswerable arguments for it. But who, or how many, have objected to it on these accounts? Newspapers and reviews of all shades of opinion have praised it. ​The most strenuously 'evangelical' pastors have advised their people to read it; and thousands, of all names and sects, have taken it to their hearts as an exceeding refreshment and joy. Could this have been forty, or even twenty, years ago? Look, too, at the new departure which 'orthodoxy' has made in the welcome which all the churches are willing to give to Universalists, notwithstanding their Universalism; in the readiness of some of them to tolerate it even in their ministers; and in the larger and kindlier fellowship for Universalists which is finding so many advocates. I know a prominent Methodist church in whose Sabbath-school an avowed Universalist is the teacher of one of the Bible-classes; and the significance of the ordination of the Rev. Mr. Jackson among the Congregationalists, and of the debate among them and others whether the doctrine of endless woe is, in any real sense, essential, is too clear to be mistaken. The old rigors, to a wide extent, have undeniably softened.
The circumstances amidst which we have to work, then, being so changed, the direction and methods of our work, manifestly, if we are to work to best effect, must be modified accordingly. Argument and exposition, attack and defence, are unquestionably still required as much as ever in some localities—in all localities on some occasions. But these are no longer our chief business. As well might one persist in swinging his axe when only an occasional tree is to be felled, and when his pressing need is to till his ground for harvests. Not that we have been altogether negligent of harvests. It is sometimes charged that we have been; and writers and speakers of our own have not been lacking, who, in a culpable neglect to qualify and discriminate, have joined in the charge. But any such representation, come it whence it may, is false, and does us great injustice. We have had earnest affirmative aims; and our organization, now so complete, but attained only after so many years of struggle and experiment, is demonstrative proof that we have sought to build as well as to tear down. But what harvests have we chiefly cultivated? To what ends have we mainly built? For the awakening of the thoughtless? For the conversion of sinners? For the salvation of souls? ​For these ends to some extent, certainly; and those there have been among us—in number not a few—second to none in the devotion and energy with which they have given themselves to such work. But can it be said that this has been the general animus, the characteristic spirit of our Universalist effort? On the contrary, while it would be slanderous to say that there has been no thought—or even to say that there has not been a good deal of thought—among us with reference to these ends, has not our labor, as the rule, concerned doctrines more than souls, except, of course, as it has always been understood that it is for the interest of souls to know the truth? Has not our effort been to convince the head that 'orthodoxy' is not true, and that God is good, and that all men are to be saved, rather than so to present the fact of God's persistent and pleading love, and of the ultimate repentance and obedience of all, as to convict the heart of sin, to quicken the conscience to a sense of guilt, and to bring the people, in penitence and a confession of personal need and obligation, to their knees? In a word, has not our labor been theological more than experimental, aiming to make Christian Universalists, and to build and consolidate a Universalist denomination, rather than to make Universalist Christians, compacted and consecrated in the Universalist Church? It is believed that no contradiction is hazarded in saying that these last questions can be truthfully answered only in the affirmative. The deepest and most interior meanings of Christ's work have never been wholly overlooked among us; but, as the rule, we have given more attention to the fact that he is to save, than to the question, How?
When I entered the ministry (1836), and for several years after, I found few with any clear and settled answer for this question, How?—for the reason that it was generally held to be of only incidental importance; and I well remember with what a trembling sense of treading on very uncertain—and almost forbidden—ground, I ventured once to read an essay in which—in a very crude way, as I now see—I had tried to work out some answer to this question for my own satisfaction. It was not until some time after the publication of Dr. Ballou's weighty and every way admirable ​paper on "The New Testament Doctrine of Salvation," in the "Expositor" of January, 1840, that the misty and incoherent state of thought on this subject began to give place to a more distinct and intelligent view. And even since, as before, that paper—which did more than any other one thing to clarify and systematize our denominational thinking on this point—the very large proportion of our ministers and people have been much more occupied with the certainty than with the method of salvation. God and what He has purposed, rather than man and the conditions which he must fulfil, have constituted the burden of our thought; and while our pulpit—from which have spoken a succession of men, as a whole, second to no others in purity and unselfish zeal—has been filled with argument in the direction of faith, more than with unction in the direction of conversion and work, our people have been intelligent, conscientious, benevolent, morally reputable, comfortably confident that everything is to come out rightly at last, rather than pious, prayerful, spiritually vital, eagerly asking, "Men and brethren, what shall we do?"
Nor, however much there may be in all this to regret, could it, in the nature of the case, have been otherwise. Consider the facts. The entire theory of God and the universe, when our movement began, and for many subsequent years, was such as to insult every rational and moral instinct, and to render all that bore the name of religion unattractive, if not a disgust. Chiefest of all, perhaps, an appalling uncertainty hung over the future. Nothing was definite. Above no grave could a sure word of prophecy be uttered. Not even to the saintliest soul, it was thought, was there authority to say, "Fear not:" for time and eternity, God is your Friend. Ours it was to pour light into this darkness. The word providentially put upon our lips was, Look up: God rules in infinite love, and Christ, as his messenger, will certainly triumph. Was it strange that, at first, we were mainly engrossed with the errors we opposed, and the glad tidings we proclaimed? Recalling how we were not only doctrinally assailed, but personally maligned, misrepresented, denounced as the religious pariahs of the country, the enemies of God and all good, would it not ​have been remarkable if we had had much thought for anything save the assertion and justification of our truth on the one hand, and the arraignment of 'orthodoxy' and its mischievous power on the other? And, full of our message of certainty, as we had occasion to be amidst the prevailing suspense and gloom, is it surprising that we did not always stop carefully to weigh in detail all the conditions involved in the result we heralded, or to emphasize the personal spiritual necessities it imposed?
But it is one of God's methods that every work educates its workers. So our work has been educating us. More and more, as the years have passed, the conditions upon which all moral results depend have been asserting themselves in our thought. The question, How? or, What have we to do? has commanded continually increasing attention. And now, entering upon the second century of our history, we have, as a body, very generally reached conclusions in the light of which the answer to this question assumes momentous importance. What we are at this point to determine is, whether or not this answer shall have the enforcement its importance calls for. Not that we are to lose any interest in the grand fact in which Universalism culminates. We are to abate nothing from the emphasis or the constancy with which we proclaim it. To do so would be to abandon the position we have conquered, and to relinquish the chief element of our power. The Gospel of Jesus Christ, without the doctrine of his certain ultimate triumph in the conquest of sin and the reconciliation of all souls to God, is the arch without the keystone, is the lever without the fulcrum, is the sky without the sun, is the body without the soul. But, while this result must still have its due place, its cognate—and, in their place, no less important—facts must have greater prominence. What is to precede this result, and what, therefore, it implies as an antecedent experience and purpose in every soul, must be more urgently pressed. In other words, the demand is that, more keenly apprehending and appreciating the innermost significance and personal requirements of the truth we teach, we shall take another step forward in the adoption of such methods of labor as the spiritual facts underlying what ​we affirm suggest and require; and on our decision in respect to this demand our future influence and fortune as a Church are suspended.
Another step forward, I say; for it is no new thing for us to take a "new departure" denominationally. As was intimated in opening, it is the law of all live movements thus to go forward by stages, either because principles are gradually more clearly perceived, or because of a ripening understanding as to the best instruments. There were such new departures in the apostolic church, as when Peter, after the vision of the sheet, went and preached to Cornelius and his friends; as when Paul and Barnabas, being rejected of the Jews, "turned to the Gentiles." Every church which has grown in the apprehension of its truth, or profited by its experience, has had similar new departures. We have had them with the rest. Let us look back a moment, and see what they have been.
There are four well-defined periods in the history of our Church, each successively marking the new departures we have made:—1. The patristic period, during which the whole type of thought and faith was 'orthodox,' with the single exception of the doctrine of universal salvation; 2. The period of transition, extending from 1795 to (perhaps) 1818, during which the 'orthodox' type of faith was supplanted by the Unitarian theory of God and the atonement, and related points (so making us the first body of Unitarian Christians in the country), the doctrine of "future punishment" being still retained; 3. The Ballouian period, extending from 1817–18 to (perhaps) 1845, during which the influence of Mr. Ballou was dominant, and his theory as to the immediate felicity of all souls at death became the general sentiment of our body; 4. The period of reaction, extending from 1845 to the present time, during which Father Ballou's theory has, in its turn, been generally superseded, and, as Dr. Ballou once phrased it, "the current of opinion has run in favor of a moral connection of the present life with the future."
Here, then, we have four distinct departures:—the first, our departure from 'orthodoxy,' and each of the others a departure, quite as marked, from ground we had been occu​pying, to a new position. Each of these was an advance. Putting their own interpretation upon them, our friends of other churches talk much of our shifting theology; and, suiting themselves in their assumptions thereupon, they moralize, greatly to their own satisfaction, on the instability of error, holding up their hands in wonder at the fatuity which imagines that a system so vacillating can have any future. It is easy at any time to retort by pointing these friends to their own shifting positions, some of them fatal to the very substance of their theology. But, not now to step aside for this, it is sufficient to say that these several departures warrant no such unfavorable inferences. They are only the stages through which our Church has grown into the perception of the adjuncts and relations of its basic truth. It is the fortune of all truth, history teaches, to be progressively perceived and formulated. The apostles walked personally with Christ as their instructor, but who of them at once understood the spiritual and universal purpose of the Gospel? So with Luther's followers: how many on the instant took in the full scope of his principles, or the meaning of his work? And so of all crusades against error or wrong, and all moral or spiritual reforms. Of which of them, that has attained any considerable proportions, has the deepest significance ever been perceived by those who have first burned and thrilled with its new message, or fought and 'roughed it' in its earlier battles? In common with all great movements of thought, or religious life, we, as a Church, have only illustrated the natural order of things.
We have not happened. Nothing in our history is the result of accident. We have come of laws as absolute as gravitation, or any law of growth; and these successive changes or departures simply show how Universalism has been historically developed. They indicate no modification of final principles, and therefore justify no reflections as to the fickleness of our theology in respect to such principles. They only show the different phases of interpretation and statement in which other and more purely modal principles have been held upon these as their common foundation, much as the varieties of soil and vegetable growth on the globe have no significance as to what is primary in its struc​ture, only as to what has, from time to time, been deposited upon its surface. Whether God exists in one or in three persons or manifestations; whether he is so sovereign that all human action is necessitated, or so sovereign as to leave action free; whether sin is exclusively of the flesh, or of the soul; whether the character we here form has all its moral importance in this world, or goes, with its consequences, into the future,—these and like inquiries are very grave, and, in a sense, vital. But they are not primal; they do not touch bottom, like those which concern the character of God, and the spirit and issues of his government. In respect to these, Universalism has never changed. On other points, differences have been numerous, and opinion has fluctuated, and our theology has been protean in its forms, so that the Universalist Church has, at various periods, stood for quite diverse ideas. But as regards these final principles, there has been no difference or fluctuation. Murray, and Ballou, and Turner, and Hosea Ballou 2d, and all whom they represent, have clasped hands, in one unbroken line, in the unity of a faith "without variableness, or the shadow of turning;" and, from the hour of its inception till now, the Universalist Church has steadily stood for precisely the same thing, viz., the impartial and immutable love of God, destined surely to triumph through Christ in the ultimate redemption of all souls. Our successive departures, it thus appears, have been simply as to the form, never as to the substance, of faith. Instead, therefore, of furnishing any occasion for adverse criticism, they have quite another meaning. Fossils never grow. Only live things develop and mature. These departures reveal the processes of our spiritual evolution. That reactions, crudities, and various fanciful and extreme opinions, should appear, was inevitable in such a breaking up of old beliefs as the past hundred years have witnessed; and it speaks honorably for the vitality and elasticity of our Church that, amidst these things, while immovably fixed as to our fundamental faith, we have been, each for himself, so free to search God's word, and to follow the light given us. Thus, enslaved by no creeds and hindered by no traditions, thought has clarified, our great principles have gradually ​pushed themselves into fuller and clearer expression, the relations and proportions of truth have become more and more manifest, till, as the result, logic, sentiment, the Bible, and spiritual law having contributed each its part, Universalism stands forth rounded and balanced into the coherent and harmonious system it is.
And now, having attained to so much through our several preceding departures, the time—returning to our statement—has fully come for another step forward. Hitherto, our departures have been mainly doctrinal, though naturally they have each somewhat affected our type of life and methods of labor. That to which we are now called is vital and experimental. It is demanded of us that, having reached certain definite conclusions, we shall distinctly and systematically give ourselves to a style of work and appeal such as they logically suggest and require. There is no room for doubt as to what has come to be the predominant conviction of our body. It is that death, as such, works no moral change; that character is continuous, except as moral agencies modify it; and that salvation, being a change of character, is possible anywhere only as the result of such agencies, acting through faith and penitence, and inducing self-surrender. There was a period in our history when these were regarded as debatable positions. With the most of us, that period some time ago ceased; and these positions are now held to be axiomatic truths, as little open to legitimate debate or question as the fact that there is such a thing as character, or that mechanical or chemical causes are incompetent to produce moral effects. And, this being so, should not these conclusions give inspiration and purpose to our ministry, and be henceforth the basis of our systematic effort as a Church?
Is it said that there are those,—among them brethren honored and beloved,—with their equal rights in our fellowship, who do not yet accept these conclusions? But are these brethren more honored or beloved, or more entitled to hold back our Church from the kind of labor befitting its general convictions, than were Murray and his coadjutors, when, notwithstanding they adhered to the old theories, the denomination, under the lead of Ballou and Turner, ​planted itself on the Unitarian platform? or than were Turner, and Dean, and Loveland, and Willis, and Hosea Ballou 2d, and those in sympathy with them, when, following Father Ballou, the denomination so generally committed itself to the 'no-future punishment' theory? The question as to what a church shall do is never—or ought never to be—a question of persons, but always of principles; and the equal rights of those who no longer represent the prevailing sentiment of the body are summed up in the right to hold, and with entire freedom to state and defend, what seems to them the truth. On no just plea, surely, either of courtesy or of right, can the exceptional claim to annul or override the common in determining the tone and purpose of a church.
It is the law of every developing movement, of whatever nature, that the thought and methods of each stage in its progress must in turn give way to those of the stage succeeding. This has been signally manifest in our history. With its peculiar philosophy and scriptural interpretations, each of our four periods has had its peculiar processes of argument, and, equally, its peculiar methods of labor and appeal. Was it, in either of these periods, in any sense a violation of the rights of—or a disregard of what was due to—those still holding the philosophy and interpretations of former periods, that methods and appeals in keeping with its own convictions were supplanting those of the period preceding? Clearly, the only rule in any such case is that the predominating convictions of a church must of right give character and direction to its life and work.
Hence alike the propriety and necessity of the New Departure herein contemplated. Many among us have already, individually, taken this departure; and the tone and methods of our Church are, in important respects, to-day very different from what they were twenty years ago. But notwithstanding these changes, and though the Ballouian philosophy has been generally discarded, we are still, as a church, mainly in the ruts of the Ballouian period as to methods and appeals. What is now required of us is that we leave these ruts, and, in a concerted and systematic direction of our labor, strike out into aims and efforts better cor​responding with the existing state of our denominational thought:—just as Murray, Adam Streeter, and Rich followed their convictions, and struck out from orthodoxy; just as Ballou and Turner struck out from Murray; and just as Ballou, loyal to his new views, struck out from himself and Turner. New wine must be put into new bottles; and if, as is indisputable, the current of new or modified conclusions is running through our Church, we must adjust our wheels and give direction to our machinery with distinct reference to the power thus supplied.
Conceding the soundness of these new or modified conclusions, what but this can we do, if, as the stewards of God, we would be faithful? Are we not imperfectly administering the Gospel, and culpably neglecting important spiritual leverage, so far as we fail duly to use the means of influence thus placed at our command? If what is thus affirmed be true, death in itself is a concern only of the body; it interrupts or cancels no spiritual law; and hence nothing is to be expected from it in the way of release from moral penalty, or a more facile admission to the company of the just, since it puts no man into any easier or more desirable relations with God, and absolves no one from any condition on which salvation here depends. The good man disembodied, passing into the more manifest presence of God, loses none of his moral attributes; is a good man there, precisely as he was a good man here—that is, in the activity of his own moral faculties; and because, carrying in himself the harvest of his prayers and saintly endeavors, he still loves and chooses to go forward in the good life. The bad man, just as certainly, passing on in like manner, loses none of his impiety, selfishness, or sin in the passage; is inevitably the same bad man at his first moment of consciousness on the other side as he was at his last moment of consciousness here. He leaves his body behind, but nothing of what he morally was, because character is not of the body, but of the soul. Character, as the one actual thing in us, is to be changed, here or hereafter, only by our own moral choice. Death has no alchemy to touch it. True, death does strip off the flesh, from the suggestions and lusts of which character for evil to some extent here comes, and in the use of ​which character here manifests itself. It does introduce us into new circumstances, amidst new, and probably mightier, influences; and precisely how these are to affect us,—of what awakenings and uplifting impulses and resolves they are to be the occasion, or what 'disinthralment of our spiritual powers' is thus to follow, no one can certainly say. It is reasonable to anticipate something from the facts to be thus taken into account, though in respect to these things, he is the wisest man who dogmatizes least. But in itself, death is simply transition, with no transmuting moral efficacy. Except, therefore, as the bad man, passing on, puts off sin and rises into a new character, just as he was called to put off sin and rise into a new character here, the curse of sin, so far as he was a sinner, still abides upon him, and will abide,—perhaps intensified as he stands consciously revealed in the sight of God and before the tribunal of the Saviour.
And these things being true, are they things to be ignored, or put to no use? On the contrary, how grave is their import, and how urgent the need of wise action for ourselves and others which they enforce! We have something, they show us, indefinitely at stake upon the characters we here form. Our salvation, under God, is in our own hands. There is peril in carelessness and sin—not for time only, but beyond. Faith, penitence, and prayer, what we mean by spiritual culture and the Christian life, are not merely things of a few days' concern to us here, to be with impunity balanced against the listlessness, or the imagined pleasures of a worldly or godless life, if we are willing to wait for death to put us right. Death cannot put us right; and these are things, therefore, on our wise choice concerning which, here and now, unspeakable interests hang: just as "now, while it is called to-day," our welfare is suspended on any decision we are called to make between right and wrong; just as always something is every hour at stake on our choice of action as to what the next hour our experience and character are to be. Choosing right in respect to God and the Saviour, every day of thoughtfulness and growing spirituality is so much gained towards that life and felicity which are to be perfected in heaven. Choosing wrong, every day ​of indifference, unbelief, or sin is a day of darkness, of hardening sensibility, of shrivelling capacity, of increasing spiritual emptiness and death—stretching on, on, so long as our choice is perverse, or we fail to cry out for God, and to turn our faces towards Him. If, then, mere physical paralysis, destitution, blindness, or pain be a thing for us to shrink from ourselves, or demanding our effort for its relief and cure in others, how much more this darkness, poverty, and death of the soul! What penalties such a condition incurs, on the other side of death no less surely than here! What hazards are thus involved! What judgments invited! What losses sustained! What suffering chosen! And all this being granted, is any ministry or any church faithful, which, holding these convictions, declines to conduct its labors and frame its appeals accordingly?
The reference just now made to them sufficiently shows that I am not unmindful of those among us who have not yet accepted this general view, and some of whom oppose it as a serious error. With these brethren, however, I have here no debate. "Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." I am not now making an argument,—only stating a position, and what consistency with it requires. My concern, therefore, is wholly with those who do accept this view, that I may illustrate with what emphasis all such of us are called of God and the welfare of souls, to use the conclusions we have reached, as, if they are true, their importance demands.
We have been, for many years, proceeding upon a false assumption. Contenting ourselves with a general, and often vigorous, enforcement of truth and duty by such sanctions as the present furnishes, we have quite extensively taken it for granted that any attempt to influence conduct by considerations drawn from its consequences, one way or another, in the future world, is somehow inconsistent with our fundamental principle that we must do right because it is right, and not from any mercenary motive. But what is there to justify this assumption? That we are to do right because it is right, is certain. Equally certain is it that to do right, or to abstain from doing wrong, solely because of reward or punishment anywhere, is, in either case, to be a hireling, ​rendering to God no acceptable service. But are the consequences of action to be, therefore, put altogether out of the case? Why, then, does God so constantly appeal to them? Is He seeking to determine action on false principles? It is only in view of its consequences that the intrinsic nature of any course is to be best understood. How are pupils fully to appreciate what knowledge and ignorance respectively are, as related to their welfare, if teachers are never to urge them to diligence by explaining the blessings of the former and the penalties of the latter? Or, how are children to understand what industry or virtue is for its own sake, if they are never to be told of the disabilities of poverty, or the advantages of wealth, or if the disgrace and wretchedness of vice, and the beauty and joy of a good life, are to be forbidden themes in their instruction? Universalists have never been backward in proclaiming the certain earthly consequences of action, both of penalty and reward; and if any consequences may be legitimately appealed to, why not all? If consequences here, why not, with equal propriety,—it being granted that there are such,—consequences hereafter? Why should death be the line across which the appeal must not reach? or how can the whole case be fairly made up, either in favor of a Christian life, or against a godless one, except as all that both involve is duly exhibited?
Paul shows us the true method. It is needless to say that he would persuade no man to a mercenary discipleship. It is quite as needless to remind those for whom these chapters are specially penned how decided were his convictions as to the results of God's government. Nothing was more certain to him than that Christ is to "put down all rule, and all authority, and power" antagonistic to God, and that God is thus to be "all in all." In his distinct foresight of this issue, and therefore in the assurance that his "labor was not in vain in the Lord," he found that which constantly sustained and inspired him; which, when he was weak, made him strong, and, amidst hostilities and discouragements, lifted him, unappalled, into victory. But with no less distinctness, he saw, too, the conditions precedent, and his sermons and epistles attest the zeal and constancy with which he empha​sized these conditions, and with a soul all aglow, called those whom he addressed to the thoughtfulness and effort required. See what he says in his figure of the Christian race, Philippians iii. 7–16; and again, in his First Letter to Timothy, vi. 9–19; and still again, in his Second Epistle, iv. 5–8. See especially the picture he gives of himself, and of his motives, in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians, v. 1–11, and particularly in these words: "Wherefore we labor, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him. For we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men." Repeated attempts have been made to show that this language has no allusion to immortality, and thus to turn aside the point the Apostle makes. As well might one allege that this whole grand connection is only a pleasant talk about an intended visit to some fair island in the Mediterranean! The theme unmistakably is our passage out of the mortal into the immortal realm; and the point is, that there as well as here, an acceptance with Christ is something to be won. This acceptance, the Apostle gives us to understand, does not come as a matter of course. It is not something indiscriminately given, without regard to antecedent conduct or character. It is something accorded only to those who struggle for it. The Apostle represents himself as struggling for it, therefore—in no mercenary spirit, but in a spirit of earnest aspiration towards harmony with God and the Redeemer.
And mark what it is in view of which he not only thus struggles himself, but is moved to persuade and animate others: "For we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ. . . . Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men." This does not mean that he had, for the moment, forgotten the love of God, nor that he would frighten anybody into religious living. It means simply that he recognized the continuousness of Christ's offices of instruction and judgment; that he perceived severities as well as tenderness in God's dealings; facts to arouse and startle as well as to attract and comfort. Considering ​these things, and looking forward to the conscious revelation of souls, as, released from the environments of the flesh, they pass into the personal presence of the Redeemer, for approval or condemnation according to the character in which they there appear, he caught a new impulse to plead with and persuade men, that they would give themselves in holiness to God.
And administering the same Gospel as Paul, can we do better than to administer it in the same way? He sought not to hire or terrify. Such effort belonged neither to his moral philosophy, nor to his theory of a regenerate life. It belongs as little to ours. It is "the goodness of God" that "leadeth to repentance," he declared; and we accept the statement as the fundamental axiom he meant it to be. The soul is moved for its redemption only by that which awakens conscience and takes hold of the affections. But there is something terrible in a life of sin, in absence from God, in spiritual insensibility, collapse and decay; there is something beautiful and blessed in a life of faith, and love, and heavenly sympathy, and divine communion; and to portray the peril of the one and the attractions of the other,—to emphasize the permanence of spiritual law, and the unescapable certainty of its retributions,—to tell men that God will never deal with them for their salvation in any mechanical way, as if they were things, but that they must work out their own salvation, in the use of His helps, as accountable souls,—to insist that the consequences of a material or atheistic life must, in the nature of things, continue until such a life, by one's own choice, is repented of and abandoned,—to preach that the judgment-seat of Christ is erected wherever souls are answerable to him, and that, passing out of the flesh, we pass into his immediate presence, to experience in his approval and the spiritual harmonies of our own being, or in his condemnation and our own self-condemnation, the fruits of what we have done and are,—to do either or all of these things is not to attempt to terrify or to hire. It is simply to state facts, as most of us believe—that those whom we seek to influence may be induced to act wisely in view of them. It is, indeed, to proceed upon the identical principle on which those proceed ​who most protest against any appeal to consequences in the future world, as often as they take up the burden of the Bible, and say with the prophet, "It shall be well with the righteous, for they shall eat the fruit of their doings," or, "Woe unto the wicked! for the reward of his hands shall be given him."
In view, then, of these several considerations, has not the time fully come when, appreciating the nature of our position, and the demands of the principles and conclusions we hold, we shall go forward in the New Departure which has here been outlined?
Three things are likely to be urged by way of objection:—
1. It will be said by some that we shall thus be 'imitating,' or 'going over to the orthodox.' But for any such plea, I confess my utter want of respect. It has already done us much mischief; and if we have any conscience, or common sense, we shall henceforth treat it with the contempt it deserves. God has given us a work. What is it to us whom we 'imitate,' or to whom we 'go over,' if it is but clear that we are following the indications of His Providence as to the best means of doing it? Our business is to be faithful; and if anywhere there is truth for us to learn, or serviceable action for us to copy, we are recreant to our trust if we do not make the most of it. Who are we that we should assume to be above profiting by the experience of others? Or, who are we that, wherever a truth may be found which we have not accepted, or which for any reason we have failed duly to enforce, we should draw ourselves up in a pompous self-sufficiency, and say, We will have none of it? Our duty is to harvest instruction from every possible field, be it Romanism, or Methodism, Presbyterianism, Episcopalianism, or any other branch of the one common Church of Christ. 'Orthodoxy,' as organized in all these forms, has much to teach us. We shall wickedly stultify ourselves if we refuse to learn.
But the step here advocated is no 'imitation' of anybody, and no 'going over' to anybody. It implies only consistency with the logic of our own convictions. We have our pronounced principles. These involve certain definite practical conclusions; and these, again, suggest ​and enjoin certain motives and appeals equally definite. The simple question is, whether we will be true to ourselves and to the interests of souls in the use of the moral instrumentalities thus put into our hands.
There is a sense, I have no doubt, in which all Protestant churches are approaching each other. The 'evangelicals' are moving towards us, theologically; we are moving towards them, in a wiser distribution of our emphasis, and in a better choice of methods. In the name of the dear Christ who would have us all one, let the good work go on. Let us make the most of our agreements, and be alienated as little as may be by our differences. So will the unity the Master prayed for come; and over every partition-wall broken down and every difference removed, and as every new sign appears, telling that the now sundered members of Christ's body are becoming more "fitly joined together . . . to the edifying of itself in love," let every good man shout, Thank God!—as every angel in heaven will surely say, Amen!
Any accord of ours with 'orthodoxy'—as to methods, however, let it be understood, argues no accord in doctrine. The methods belong to Christianity,—not to 'orthodoxy;' and to approach 'orthodoxy'—not by way of imitation, but in a clearer apprehension of what the best administration of the Gospel requires,—in the use of these common Christian methods, is one thing;—to approach it in principle or ultimate conclusion, is quite another. We thus approach it in principle or conclusion, only when we limit the extent of salvation, or materialize its substance. We do not so approach it, however we may emphasize the fact that salvation has its conditions. 'Orthodoxy,' partial, arbitrary, judicial in spirit, proceeds on one plane of principle and purpose, to one end. The conception of Christianity which we represent, impartial and parental, proceeds on a very different plane, to a very different end. One counts law, the other counts souls, as God's paramount care. That thinks chiefly of vengeance, miscalled justice; this of reconciliation. That makes it its business to save souls from hell; this to deepen and magnify a sense of the intrinsic peril and curse of wrong. That points to Christ as our ​substitute in the endurance of the penalty of God's law, and calls us to faith in him as the expedient to get us into heaven when we die; this presents Christ as the messenger of God's love and truth, and calls us to faith in him as the power of God to build up heaven within ourselves wherever we may be. That seeks to have us 'make our peace with God' by doing something to change His feelings and attitude towards us; this by quickening us to a change of feeling and attitude towards Him. And, finally, that portrays a flaming abyss which God has built for the endless torture of sinners after death, and, leading us to its brink, essays to terrify us into a religious life; this shows first that all separation from God, or lack of sympathy with Him, is darkness, death, and hell, and then, proclaiming that the mere decease of the body avails nothing to release us from it, seeks to persuade us by the love of God and the Saviour, by the blessings of goodness and by the curse of sin, to turn straightway to God through Christ, since, whether present or absent, in the flesh or out, he is the sole gate into a divine acceptance and the best life.
It is clear, then, that the New Departure here urged in no way involves any sacrifice of our Universalist identity. It means simply a consistent enforcement of our own principles, in no assimilation to 'orthodoxy,' except that we are to be willing to profit by every example of earnestness, of systematic and effective work, and of whole-hearted consecration, wherever it may appear. They, it is worth while to remark in passing, are the only Universalists at all open to the charge of approaching the old 'orthodoxy' in principle, who insist that salvation is something to be conferred upon us at death without any condition of faith or effort, here or elsewhere, on our part.
2. It will be alleged, perhaps, that the New Departure here urged involves a cessation of our doctrinal work. But it is not so. I have already said that we are to abate nothing from the emphasis or constancy with which we proclaim our grand result, and that argument and exposition, attack and defence, will still be required; and as to our work of Christian teaching, I have seriously failed in what I intended, if it has not been implied, as the underlying thought of all ​that has been said, that this is, of course, to proceed. What is contemplated in this plea for a New Departure, as will more fully appear in the chapters that are to follow, is—only less of antagonism, denial, and controversy, for mere doctrinal ends, and a great deal more of affirmative, constructive, applying labor, for vital and practical results.
I am free to confess, indeed, that there seems to me to be little occasion for us to preach doctrine as a means of inducing a rejection of the sacrificial theology, or of making converts to Universalist ideas. Numerous outside agencies are rapidly doing these things for us. Years ago one of our thoughtful laymen (Ex-Governor Washburn), speaking of such agencies, truly said that they are accomplishing more for Universalism, in these respects, than Universalists themselves. But large numbers, including not a few who bear the Universalist name, have only the crudest conceptions of what Universalism is. The grounds, relations, and arguments of the truth, and the meaning of the Bible as bearing upon it, are not understood. For these reasons, Universalism should still be preached as a doctrine. And there is another reason. Universalism, we believe, is only another name for Christianity; and Christianity, though it culminates in a life, is, in essence, a system of principles—that is, of doctrines. Hence only as these doctrines are apprehended is Christianity apprehended, or can it become most effectually a power for the salvation of souls. To preach about Christianity, or about what it requires, is not to preach Christianity, nor for the fulfilment of Christian ends. Christianity is preached only as its doctrines are preached, and only thus are the materials and inspiration for the Christian life supplied. "Sanctify them through thy truth," was our Lord's prayer for his disciples; and we never find him or his apostles preaching for the conversion and sanctification of men except by preaching doctrines as the basis of the precepts they enjoined. They preached principles, and not about principles, showing men how and why to be good, instead of talking about goodness. And what was wise in them is no less wise in us. Nor can we, or any other church, do God's work of translating His truth ​into life, except as they sought to do it—upon a doctrinal foundation.
But observe, they never preached doctrine simply as doctrine, nor with reference to any mere intellectual contest or victory. Neither should we. They preached it only to rebuke sin, and impel to holiness. We should preach it only for the same purpose. Like theirs, our business is to quicken and save souls. What the time and the world most call for is moral inspiration. It is important what one believes concerning God, and the spirit and issues of His government. But the question of transcendent concern is, not whether one believes in Universalism, but whether, believing it, or professing to believe it, he is showing himself experimentally a believer. Is he filled with a sense of obligation to God and the Saviour? Is he a man of prayer? Does he abhor sin? Is he melted and humbled at the foot of the cross? Does his soul glow with religious affection? Is his being instinct with spiritual life? These are the only results for which any church has a right to exist; and only to produce these should we preach doctrine, or anything else.
This is the fact to which the New Departure here outlined would call attention: not to induce any neglect or oversight of doctrine, but that the purpose of all Christian teaching may be more distinctly recognized, and that Universalism as a doctrine may be so conceived and administered as to do more in religiously quickening souls, and leading them to God.
3. The other objection I anticipate is, that what is here proposed is no new departure at all. This may come from two entirely opposite quarters.
On the one hand, those in sympathy with the general purpose here in view may say that what is urged should not be spoken of as a 'new departure,' for the reason that so to designate it is to fail to do justice to the actual condition of our church-thought, is to overlook what has already occurred, and is thus to imply what is not true. What is proposed, they may say, has been for a considerable time in progress; and for themselves, they may add, they took the departure long ago. But if these brethren will turn back a ​few pages (p. 21), they will see that I have distinctly said that many among us have already individually taken this departure, and that, in important respects, the tone and methods of our Church to-day are very different from what they were twenty years ago. Moreover, the whole plea I here make proceeds on the ground that the change of sentiment which has taken place among us demands it. What I am anxious to see, as I intimated in the connection referred to, is a concerted, systematic movement, by common consent striking out into the new style of labor that is called for, and distinctively committing us as a church to it. As a matter of personal conviction and method, what is recommended has, to some extent, already been done by not a few of us. As a denominational movement, it has yet to be done. Only in this latter sense do I speak of it as a new departure, and in this sense it clearly is so.
Then, on the other hand, it will be said by those opposed to the course here recommended, that it would be no new departure, only a return of our Church to the old doctrine of 'future punishment,' and thus a going back to ground we have once abandoned. But any such objection is without basis in fact. I can conceive, indeed, that it might have in it some element of fact, and yet be no objection. In the violence of its reaction from existing opinions, a movement may for a time swing away from some truth to which it finds it necessary afterward to return; and such a return, in its place, is a going forward as really as though the truth were then first announced. In this case, however, the objection has not even so much to make it valid. The theory of 'future punishment,' as it prevailed in our early history,—and as it has usually prevailed,—proceeds on the 'orthodox' predicate that God's administration is not now one of just and equal moral awards; that this earthly life is one of probation, not of exact retribution; and that, ​in the case of those who die unsaved, the account is to be squared only as they are still further punished on the other side of the grave. In other words, the theory is one of debt and credit, affirming in effect that the sinful and unbelieving at death stand charged with so much punishment due, and that the books can be balanced only as this is hereafter visited upon them. But all such theorizing is now happily exploded among us, as it is fast passing out of the thought of all well-informed and reflective minds.
The Ballouian period, in the order of our development, did incalculable service, not alone to us, but to the whole Christian world, in this respect. Herein, doubtless, was its providential purpose. Up to that period, the whole interest of our being was focalized in the future world. Everything here was thought to be morally at loose ends—the wicked not punished; the good not rewarded; every man left to live as he might list, with occasion only to think of that terrible day of account yonder, when the books are to be opened, and all are to be brought to judgment. So far as this world is concerned, the whole current of theological teaching averred, there is no motive to live a godly life, the preponderance of motive being rather on the side of a life of sin, were it not for the terrible hour of recompense that is coming; but then all the hardships and sacrifices of the good are to be paid for by the felicities of heaven, and all the rejoicings and prosperities of the bad are to be balanced by the torments of hell. Thus time was nothing. Eternity was everything. Hosea Ballou—speaking of him as leader and representative—made war against all this. He proclaimed God's instant and constant moral rule. He appealed to the Bible, and familiarized the popular ear with the statements, long overlooked, that God "verily is a God that judgeth in the earth;" that, "though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished;" that "the way of transgressors is hard;" that "there is no peace, saith the Lord, to the wicked;" and that, while "to be carnally-minded is death, to be spiritually-minded is life and peace." He did not fail to recognize the fact that time is often required for certain judgments to culminate and burst upon evil-doers, as also for certain fruits of righteousness to ​ripen into most conspicuous display. But, he iterated and reiterated, God reigns nevertheless, holding every soul to rigid account. He never suspends payment, or does business on credit; but by inviolable laws, according to what one is in character, must, every moment, be his experience of loss and pain, or peace. And, thus preached, how this doctrine was ridiculed and denounced! What weapons of sarcasm, and argument, and misapplied Scripture were launched against it! What idiocy and 'moral insanity' it was alleged to indicate! What appeals to appearances and seeming facts were made, often "with great, swelling words," to demonstrate how opposed it was to the lessons of actual daily life! But, despite all, the testimony was persistently given, and, with untiring pertinacity, the Bible was cited, history and experience were invoked, and the nature of things, and the necessities of spiritual law, were adduced in its support and demonstration. As the result, no moral philosophy would now be thought sound that did not include this doctrine as one of its cardinal ideas; and no intelligent pulpit, at all abreast of the time, fails more or less positively to enforce it. Had Hosea Ballou done nothing else except so to put into the thought and consciousness of Christendom this vital fact concerning the instant and constant operation of God's moral government, he would deserve to be honored as one of the world's great reformers; and while most of us now are compelled to think, and on occasion do not scruple to say, that in our judgment some of the theorizings and conclusions of the Ballouian period have been exceedingly mischievous as practical elements of our denominational life, we hold it as undeniable that, on the whole, it has helped us and helped the world onward, and that these undesirable speculations, inevitably incident to such a drift-period of thinking, have been more than counterbalanced by the result thus accomplished,—a result, it is perhaps for us to consider, that could have been so widely and thoroughly reached only as attention was arrested, and discussion engendered, and feeling stirred by the extreme putting of this idea in the doctrine of 'no future punishment.' The evil of overstatement is not unfrequently thus overruled for the permanent advance of truth.
​At all events, the Universalist church is now immovably fixed in this position; and what is here urged is no going back to any outgrown and abandoned doctrine, but really a new departure, because a more logical and strenuous affirmation of the principle underlying this position as always and everywhere true. And if, as this principle alleges, God does actually deal with us so rigidly according to our character, holding us instantly and constantly to account, to what but the very thing here pressed are we called as the duty most imperatively devolving on us? For, if God does so hold us to account, then, no matter where we may be, character becomes the one grand concern on which everything in our moral experience depends. And, this being so, how can we, as a Christian church, at all discharge our obligations, unless we hold up this fact, and summon men to act in view of it, as the fact of solemn and perpetual significance it is?
Contenting myself, then, with these rejoinders to the objections likely to be made to the purpose of these pages, the question returns, Has not the time fully come for the New Departure here sketched? If the Gospel of Christ be indeed God's ministry of healing and life to a perishing world,—if sin really is a wrong, on account of which we should feel guilty, and a curse, without regard to time or place, from which we need escape,—if especially it be true, as we have come so generally to believe, that there is unspeakable peril in sin, that every human soul has something at stake on its character and choice, not simply for this world, but for all worlds, and that, till it heartily repents, and gives itself to God through Christ, it is and must be, according to its lack of religious quickening and purpose, in darkness and spiritual death, whether in this world or any other,—is it not alike the call of God and of needy souls that we give ourselves as never before to the enforcement of these truths, and thus to the endeavor to make them, to the widest possible extent, "the power of God unto salvation" in the world?
Let no one raise the cry that this is a proposition to disturb the existing harmony of our Church, or to set up new ​standards of Universalist fellowship. Nothing is here said of any new terms of fellowship; and it is preposterous to suppose that the harmony of our Church is to be disturbed by any honest effort to call us more perfectly to meet the demands of any convictions to which we have generally arrived. Our Church, thank God, is at length one; and palsied be the hand or tongue that, except on some issue of overmastering principle, would divide it. Our platform is laid; and as it is, so in substance it must be. We need no new departure in this respect. Whoever believes in the Bible as the record of God's successive revelations, in the Lord Jesus Christ as the authoritative Son of God, and in the final redemption of all souls through Christ, is a Universalist, however he may interpret the Bible on incidental points. We have always had the largest liberty of opinion on this common platform. This liberty of opinion must continue. But it is clearly not only fit, but obligatory upon us, that the dominant state of opinion shall give distinctive tone and direction to our church-life. It would be both a very factious and a very unreasonable minority that should deny this, be the dominant opinion what it might; and, while no one's freedom of opinion or of utterance is to be trenched upon, our general conviction as to the nature of salvation, and as to what is dependent on faith and prayer and spiritual co-operation with God, must, unless we are to fail of the errand appointed us, henceforth determine our estimate as to what we have to do, and how we shall seek to do it.
This, then, is the New Departure for which it is the purpose of this book to plead. It is not, indeed, the only new departure to which we are called, as we go forward to make up the record of another century. Intellectually we need to make such a departure, and, not less, practically.
The Universalist believer should be second to no other in the breadth and freshness of his thinking, in the largeness of his mental hospitality and acquirements, or in the warmth and comprehensiveness of his moral and philanthropic concern. And the Universalist church must be nowhere excelled in its zeal for education; in the ripeness and fulness ​of its culture; in its superiority to prescription and prejudice; in its readiness to welcome light, come it whence it may; or in its wise and free-handed plans for the instruction of the ignorant, and the rescue of the perishing. Our record in these respects is creditable, but we must be ambitious for far better things.
Sympathetically, Universalism is the synonyme of a love that includes all souls, and of a saving purpose which leaves not one out; and it will be a shame to us if, as our numbers and resources increase, we do not put ourselves, in respect to all philanthropic and practical Christian activities, in the van of the church, where, as the representatives of such a gospel, we belong.
And so, theoretically, Universalism is equally the synonyme of "whatsoever is true;" and, as its disciples, it is incumbent on us to be open, receptive, inquiring, accordingly. There are religionists who are afraid of science, and who, amidst the jostlings of modern discovery, are constantly putting forth their hands to steady the ark of God. And occasion enough they have for apprehension. But a true religion has nothing to fear from any true science. Science is the knowledge of God's doings demonstrated to our reason; religion is the knowledge of the same God revealed to our faith. Let science explore and demonstrate wheresoever or whatsoever it may, then, the religion that really has God's truth in it can possibly come to no harm. For this reason, we have nothing to apprehend, only, in the way of illustration and confirmation, everything to expect. We should welcome discovery, therefore, and keep abreast of the most advanced knowledge, that we may see how all truth harmonizes, and be led up every shining path which it opens, with strengthened faith, into sweeter nearness to God.
Speculations there are, indeed, calling themselves science, irreverent, self-sufficient, which, skimming the surface, or jumping at conclusions, set themselves, "with malice prepense," to undermine all religion, and relegate the world back to Paganism. And a habit of scientific assumption, too, there is, and a disposition to insist that all inquiries must be pushed in an exclusively scientific spirit, both of ​which repudiate faith as a rightful element in any conclusion. All these we must be able to estimate at their real worth, and to dispose of as they deserve. But true science we must hail as always our ally and friend, to be not simply accepted, but loved, served, in every legitimate way furthered and encouraged.
And so in respect to all that is highest and broadest in the intellectual activities of the age, and of the coming ages. Not only must we have our scientists and educators. We must have our philosophers, our discoverers, our historians, our thinkers and workers in every field, kings and priests among the most regal and priestly leaders of the world, to whom none who wish to know the best things can afford to be indifferent. We shall have them.
And, so led, our whole Church must be pervaded by a kindred spirit. We know not, indeed, to what momentous office, in relation to the Bible and Christianity, this Church of ours is, in the providence of God, yet to be called. With 'orthodoxy,' science and all progressive thought are in irrepressible conflict. All the discoveries and tendencies of the time are at war with its old statements and interpretations. Ere we are aware of it, therefore, the fortunes of Christianity as a historical religion, humanly speaking, may be in our keeping; and upon us, reviled as we have been as the enemies and rejecters of the Bible, its final defence and vindication may devolve. Ours it should be to prepare for so grave a trust, ready and waiting to keep step with every new advance, that whatever results earnest thought and legitimate investigation may anywhere furnish, may be made by us to tell for the further verification of truth and the glory of God.
All this, however, will come naturally in the order of events, if we keep ourselves in other respects a live and faithful people. Our deepest and most imperative need is spiritual awakening and impulse. This is the deepest and most imperative need of all Christendom. The old theologies are dying. Souls are adrift. Minds are questioning and doubting. Hearts are hungering. Life is largely without centre or mastery, except from beneath. What they ​need is spiritual arrest, quickening, anchorage. Ours it is, if we actually have any. business in the world, to answer these great uses. We must arrest, attract, religiously satisfy, and vitalize what will else be without any spiritual ministry or direction. And, to do this, we must be a people profoundly conscious of spiritual realities, and glowing with spiritual life. Our principles are final and eternal. Our standards of fellowship are all we require, if honestly interpreted and faithfully enforced. In every outward particular we are well equipped for the work assigned us. Our one thing wanting is that, taking up the words of the apostle, we shall say with high resolve, "Whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule; let us mind the same thing." We have thus far carried the torch of God's universal and immutable love to dissipate the shadows and burn up the errors of the old interpretations, disclosing afar off the issue to which, under His guardianship, all things surely tend. We are now called to use this torch more clearly to disclose the conditions on which all spiritual results depend, and on which alone the prophesied fact of Christ's efficiency can become a fact accomplished in any soul. We are to emphasize spiritual law. We are more specifically to aim at definite spiritual ends. More positively recognizing the work of saving souls as the work of every Christian church, we are to address ourselves as never before to this labor. In one word, having fought the battle and won the position we have, ourselves meanwhile growing into greater distinctness of intellectual and moral perception, we are to avail ourselves of the position we have reached to enter on our second century seeing more clearly precisely what, as the servants of the world's Redeemer, we have to do, and using more earnestly the new and higher means of influence at our command.
Why and how this is to be done, it will be the purpose of succeeding chapters to show.