The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1897-07-10

to Christ and the Bible. L am per-
fectly willing that those who wish
what they consider ampler religious
pasturage should seek it, but have
no desire to be transported bodily,
nor have my present shelter removed
without my consent.
l am in the church because / have
considered Christianity to be univer-
sal in its scope, and in its capacity to
embrace all that is true and good,
while narrow enough to exclude all
that is evil and false; because be-
lieved that our church has the truest
Interpretation of the Bible, that the
Bible is the universal book and Christ
the universal man and Saviour, as we'll
as the Son of God.
". Again, l do not want the creed
changed; because believe its state
ments, and believe they are impor-
tant. The word "restore" is not as
Objectionable to me as to some whose
motives l respect, though with their
judgments l can not coincide. | be-
lieve the Bible teaches the Fall of
Man, especially in Genesis and in the
writings of st. Paul. The idea is an
essential thought in his system of
Universal Restorationism. | have no
doubt it was believed by Christ and
the apostles; our Biblical argument
is largely invalidated if we leave it
out. That is, to say at the least, |
believe that man was not created
the rough, CORY, brutal, savage that
some suppose him to have beer, but
rather "a gentle child of nature" in
nocent, guileless, undeveloped, if you
please, but kept from wickedness and
vile excess, as many brutes are, in
stinctively, by his natural moral in
stincts, through which God spoke to
his soul. There may have been
time even upon the evolutionary hy
pothesis when he became distinctly
man, when he woke to moral consci
BUSINESS, when he was tried, tempted,
and consciously, voluntarily sinned
and fell, as we always fall when we
sin. Call Adam "a type" if you
please; the great fact still remains.
The Adamic sin is accumulated in
theology because it is type, and be-
cause it marks the point of departure
of our race. The effect of that fall,
though not of the fall alone-by her
edity and relational connection, af
fects our race, throws us out of rap
port with the Divine Spirit, dislocates,
disharmonizes. We need to be re-
stored, reharmonized, and this is
done, and will yet be universally done
through Jesus Christ
There is nothing in any demon
strated facts of science against this
view.
Man is by nature an eater of fruits
and nuts, not ferocious carnivora.
Savage populations have often been
reported by their discoveries as mild
and idyllic in their lives, even though
cannibals. And where we find man
otherwise. cruel, brutal, degraded,
wicked, subsisting on the flesh of
men and brutes, so ualid and wretched,
it is quite likely the result of degen-
eracy, through sin and unfavorable
environments; for we must remember
that degeneration is as much an es-
tablished fact in evolution as adj
vancement.
1t is one of the fond, but baseless
ideas of many, that evolution" is
always coward and upwards" and
it is-for the select few; but for the
mass, it is downward and onward to
mutilation and extinction. Every
student of natural history knows
this. Man first appeared in religion
fitted for him. He did not appear
until it was fitted for him.
Moral quality or condition does
not depend upon knowledge of the
arts and sciences, but upon obedi-
ence to the unperverted moral in
stincts, or the revealed will of God.
Sin perverts that instinct, degrades,
deprayes, produces that moral and
spiritual condition which the Script
ures call death.
Not wholly insignificant are those
almost universal legends of Golden
Age at the beginning of human his
tory. Not only in the Bible does it
appear, but in the legends of Greece
and Rome, and even of India and
China. Our disposition to idealize the
past may we'll be, but the inherited
memory of that age ranging back
wards but not reaching its goal,
clarifying the spot on which it falls,
as a sunbeam breaking through the
clouds glorifes the sward on which
it rests. Scientific discovery has not
yet and can not disprove this view.
| The instance of human degradation