The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1886-11-13

hardly have been engaged in Staying
alive those old medieval denominations
that so cursed the world and brought
blight and mildew to every interest OF
their age. Their administration was
right for their times, as ours is for ours.
AS honest, sincere, self sacrificing men,
they were to their time what the truest
and most faithful of persons are to-day.
It is in vain the attempt to build a
house in the place of another until the
old rubbish is removed out of the way.
While planting their tree of life, how
should they be expected to be gather
| ing fruit from the same? We have no
reason for affirming that their work
was not on perfectly legitimate basis,
or that it was not properly ethical, be-
cause they did not commence to build
from the top. Could they have lived
in, or until our time, how dare we
affirm that they would not have been
quite in advance of usp 1t is very GER
tain that they were far more radical for
their time, than we are for ours. Even
Father Ballou was not so much con-
troversial preacher at first, but came to
be more so, as he plainly saw the need
of it.
No one should be a mere imitator of
another, of those who have gone before
them, or those who shall come after
them. The imitators of the fathers are
they who initiate the spirit, the fidelity,
the good sense and practicability of the
fathers. Several of these had their
own individual opinions, which most
surely we could not be expected to
adopt. They had been endeavoring to
follow out their own best thought as to
what was true and right, in the light of
reason and sound discretion; and when
told that reason was not to be trusted,
as the Bible was the only authority in
matters of religion, they did not give
up their reason, but only reasoned the
harder. They simply knew that the
doctrine of eternal punishment could
not be true, and the Bible (about which
there was no real agreement among its
friends, and which had been overlaid
and obscured, made literal and made
spiritual, till all kind of happenings
had come to it), had to be accepted, if at
all, as rightly and reasonably under
stood assured that men must conscien-
tiously exercise their reason, if not as
authority, yet as an indispensable help
for reaching the absolute authority. 1t
seemed to them like plain proposition,
that all right reason must accord with
genuine Scripture truth and he who
appealed to the one oaght,to be able to
appeal to the other, since the Word
without us, and the Word within us,
are but one and the same. The fact
of others attempting to reason them
out of their reason, showed that they
themselves had nothing but reason to
fall back upon; and it was claimed that
one might as well think of putting out
their eyes to look through a telescope
at the sun, as to lay aside their reason
in judging of the Scriptures. And thus
they discussed the matter backward and
forward.
They could not gainsay the fact that
if revelation had to be interpreted by
reason, then whatever was true by the
latter could not be false by the former.
And further :. 2. if it had to be en-
braced upon the trial and conviction of
reason, it was plain that the admission
of the principles of reason were to be
depended upon, which if they were, we
could not admit anything as true which
contradicted those principles, and which
reason told us was manifestly false.
Who would contend for moment that
we can believe otherwise than as things
are made to appear to our understand
ings? And then to suppose that God re-
quires us to give up our understandings,
a matter we cannot know but by using
them, is to suppose that he requires
impossibilities.
1t was the greatest kind of question
for long time, whether reason was to
be applied to the Bible in understand
ing and interpreting it but the period
came at last when reason had to be
respected; and while, as yet, the fathers
like most, if not all others, had no uni
form methods of Interpreting the Bible.
1t was to them more or less confused
teaching; and at this juncture COM
menced the battle of texts, and it was
soon found that very large part of the
work required of the fathers, was to
show how much that which had been
supposed to be the teaching of the
Bible, did not at all belong to it, and
how terribly the Bible had been mis-
construed by those who professed to be
it's interpreters. The minds of men
had been SO long accustomed to connect
mystery and scheming with religion,
that the one most important object to
be obtained, was to dissolve this con-
nection, and when this was done you
might almost say all was done. And
one of our greatest achievements has