The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1896-10-24

eral Convention, held that year in
Auburn, with the now venerated w. S.
Balch as preacher of the Occasional
Sermon. There were at that time
only 300 preachers in the denomina-
ton; many of them without parishes
many supporting themselves by
other pursuits and preaching as they
could the while. This friend and
Jealous Universalist-Dr. Robinson
reported to myself and others the
grand gathering, and told us what a
glorious meeting it was; but in men,
tioning some of the incidents of the
occasion, he said that one of the
preachers present-whose name I
failed to remember-held to the
novel and startling idea that the res
direction was not a simultaneous
process of an infinite future, but a
continuous process-not the resusci
tation of the dead body, but an as
cent of the spirit from the body at
death, and its investment at the same
time with new and spiritual body
instead. The other preachers, how
ever, apparently thought that this
one was "away off," and seemed to
apprehend, or fear, a descent into
skepticism and infidelity, if such
views we're encouraged-as always
seems to be the case with conserva-
tives whenever an advance in thought
is suggested.
Now, at this our day, 1 suppose we
have not even one among our preach
ers and among our intelligent laity
who would in the main dissent from
the view of that single preacher in
1910; while yet many of us, perhaps,
are still given somewhat to the idea
that the browning of salvation once
had beginning; that some time in
the future it is going to have con-
summation, and that in this consum-
nation the expectation of all be-
levers will be realized in the stimuli
taneous holiness and happiness of all
the intelligences who ever shall have
lived on the earth or any other planet,
or, as we have it worded in Father
Ballou's hymn:
"In Gods eternity
There shall day arise,
When all the race of man shall be
With Jesus in the skies.n
In my study of the subject I am
no longer able thus to view things.
To me now, universal salvation is not
simultaneous communicating
the universal conclusion of plan
and an economy begun at a point in
past duration-not universal wind
up" or summing up of affairs; nor
ought we to treat of it as thing only
of the future-as an affair not to be
accomplished till at an unknown and
far-off period in the future when
the plan, the order and the operation
of the universe are to be preternatur-
ally or extra-n naturally consummated,
as if they were not already now, as
they always have been, in equilibrio,
or harmony.
In a general statement of the mat
tor, universal salvation is now accom-
plished as much as it ever will be,
and as it always has been. Salvation
is universal because it is a universal
attainment = not a simultaneously
universal attainment, but an attain
ment by each and every individual
at that point in the progressive career
of each where his discipline bears
the fruit of right knowledge, of right
affection and of right will. There
fore salvation is all the while being
attained. Every self-conscious intel
ligence that ever has existed on the
earth or any other planet, or that
ever will thus exist, either already
has reached or yet will reach the
point, as his being progresses, where
the end for which, as an indi-
vidual he exists, is realized; and so
salvation is universal just as birth is
universal, and Just as the change that
we call death is universal.
There is no general contamination,
conclusion, wind up" of things-of
Gods affairs, for his affairs are eter-
nal, and eternally souls are being
brought into individual conscious
ness, on one or more of the presuma-
bly, habitable bodies included in a
universe that has no limit in space
and no beginning or end in time; and
eternally also are souls developed
through progression, into an ultima
tely right state of intelligent life-or
as otherwise phrased, the state of sal
walton; and so the eternal spirit, or
universal soul-the parent soul
through a proceeding as unbegun
and unending as his own existence
brings forth souls into intelligent
consciousness, and eternally trains