The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1896-08-08

continents are doing, and nave
been doing, from the creation
from the days of the food,
through all the treacheries and pit
falls wherein the human race has
been reeling and staggering down to
modern times; when l look at Asia
and Africa, and Europe and America,
and both continents of it, and see
what the actual condition of the neg
lected, the stripped, the peeled, the
despoiled, the owntrodden race of
man has been; if thought that in
addition to all this there was God
that was clothed in thunder, and
whose business it was to stand at the
door where men go out of life and
crush them downward into hell
every instinct of charity, of SYM
patty and of love that is born in me
by Christ would stand crying, Ami
hilate him! Annihilate him! 1t would
be the sorrow of the universe that
would raise this cry"
They have yet the task beyond
human skill of parrying the deadly
force of the blow which John Stuart
Mill struck at the popular faith, when
he said: "That countless millions of
human beings should have been al
lowed to live and die, to sin and suf-
fer, without the one thing needful,
the divine remedy for sin and suffer
ing, which it would have cost as little
to have vouchsafed to all as to have
bestowed by special grace on the
favored minority, he who can be-
lieve these to have been the inten-
tional shortcomings of perfectly
good being must impose silence on
every prompting of the sense of good
ness and justice as received by men,"
They have yet to give rational an
swer to the question why they should
not say "Amen" to his further asser-
ton: eff God will send me to hell for
not loving being, many of whose
traits are unlovely and abhorrent to
my soul, then to hell l will CO."
III. Finally and briefly. Our sys-
tenn presents man as being of in
estimable worth. Men are souls
sons of God-hence heirs of God
and joint heirs with Christ, unworthy
sons-prodigal Often sons still,
and never to be cut off utterly from
the nheritance-never forgotten of
the Father, who keeps robe and
ring with which to clothe and adorn
them when they come from their
husks and swine herding. These sons
of God are endowed with capacities
which seem formed for endless growth
and expansion. The root of every
grand possibility is in them. They
are free sons, and Responsible; and
through this marvellous power and
endowment were made for, and des-
tined to achieve not only complete
triumph over evil, but to gather to
themselves untold harvests of good
from the wide fields of God-to go
on and on forever in noble progress
toward perfection.
This, then, is the God of our system
this the Christ this the salvation
this the man to be saved. God one,
infinitely wise, holy. A Father with
loving purpose and desire, yet un-
yieldingly just toward the rebellious
soul. Christ, the revelation of the
Father; full of the spirit of sacrifice
and compassionate longing for life in
men; full of Gods wisdom and love;
Saviour for all-eternally the same;
finally triumphant. Man of inestim-
able worth and possibility under
Gods guidance and discipline, and
with divinely exalted destiny at
last.
This to my thought is Distinctive
Universalism."
COLUMBUS, Wis.