Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-06-10
NO SOULS ARE LOST,
Rev. Mr.. Williams Outlines the
Universalist Faith.
DEATH ONLY A CHANGE.
Man Dies SO Far Ms the Body is Concerned
Every Seven Years. and What We Call
Death is Only Sudden Change Like One
of These Gradual Ones.

Rev. W. s. Williams, pastor of the Univer-
salIst church, spoke yesterday morning on
"What Universalists Believe Regarding Life
and Immortality" The large hall over the
gas companys office on Sixth street. in which
the services of this church are held, was well
filed, many being present who are not regular
attendants at this church, but were drawn
doubtless by desire to have q clear and au-
thoritative definition of the Universalist belief
regarding the life beyond the grave.
Mr.. Williams took his text from Second
Timothy j, 10: who abolished death and
brought life and immortality to light" In the
commencement the speaker showed that the
Universalist faith was direct and emphatic
challenge to the common idea that life stops at
death and begins anew in another world The
Universalist believed that life never stopped.
There is No Next Lite.
If there was such a thing as life ceasing it
would never begin. One correct thought, MAIN
tanned as fundamental principle, is the truth
that whatever is, never can cease to be- Life
is; it could never cease to be. 1t could never
stop. There is no Next. When people speak
of the next life, they speak incorrectly. The
life that is always will be.
So regarding immortality. There are those
who speak of the next life as the immortal life;
but man is already immortal, he could not IN
immortal now he never can be. He is immor-
tai now. and his immortality could not in any
way be conditional upon what he does.
Man is-not is to be-immortal. Death, the
speaker thought, was only one of the changes
in his Immortality. Nor was 1t the only one.
There was the change from childhood to man
hood. There was the change from manhood
to old age. Death was only change like these,
perhaps less clearly understood.
Man Dies Every Seven Yenrs.
The Universalist regarded death simply as
one of the stages in our immortal progress. 1t
affected the body. 1t was physical change
and it did not stand alone. Man really dies
once every seven years, as to the body Once
every seven years there is a complete change.
When what we term death occurs we simply
drop at once what we have been dropping
gradually every seven years since we have been
born.
Reasoning from analogy the speaker held
that our immortal life, like all life, was state
of progress, that there was no such thing as
loss. that after death all souls grew on-better,
happier, that to speak of lost soul was to
speak of what could never be in the nature of
things. Life knew no loss.
In conclusion Mr.. Williams took issue with a
Pittsburg divine, who had been quoted as rele-
eating the Johnstown disaster to MS list of Wis
tations of divine wrath. The calamity came
not from the wrath of God. but simply from
disobedience OF negligence of natural laws 1t
was neither in reason nor in Christianity to at
tribute it to the wrath of God.
Not Visitation of Providence.
1t was Christ who said: Those upon whom
the town of Sloan fell and killed them. Think
ye they were worse than other men," The
horror attendant upon the Johnstown disaster,
from the human side, could not be avoided.
The ioss. the apparent pam, the separation, all
these were terrible. But from the divine side,
there was no horror there. Those bodies
wrapped in sand and debris were simply the
frsil tenements of souls, that live forever,
growing as they live, unchanged by accident or
condition,