CHRISTIAN UNIVERSALISM.
"Universalism is a living movement, organized out of the grandest
ideas and spiritual facts of the universe; gathering into itself the
richest and mightiest moral forces, and working towards the most
positive practical ends; and a man is a Universalist, and is the
better off for being a Universalist, only as some sense of what
Universalism thus is, and of the force of its motives, and the
reality of its work, flows down, a quickening power, into his
being."--E. G. BROOKS, D. D.
The name _Universalism_, as connected with Christianity, has been
especially notable during the present century. But the principles
which it implies were averred by the Christian church in its earliest
days. It signifies God's unchanging paternal interest in all his
children; an interest insuring his just dealing with them for their
obedience or disobedience of his beneficent laws, and their final
release from sin, and life in righteousness. Under its present name,
Universalism is comparatively recent; its special church history being
comprehended in something more than a century. But its principles and
doctrines are as old as the Christian records, and are found in the
Old Testament teachings. Just as all the sects in Christendom, though
belonging to modern times, profess to trace whatever they may deem
essential back to the Apostles, so believers in Universalism make the
same reference, as one of their number has well stated it: "If we have
no business here because we came so late, our neighbors must fall
under the same condemnation. In mere assumption we are neither younger
nor older than they."
The Universalist Church claims the New Testament as the basis of its
doctrines. It cites the Gospels, the Apostolic History and the
Epistles, Christ, and his first ministers, as authority for its
pretensions. After the apostles, its lights appear in the early
centuries of the Christian era. Dr. Edward Beecher, in his able work,
"The Scriptural Doctrine of Future Retribution," shows that at about
the time of Origen, out of the six theological schools in Christendom,
four taught Universal Salvation as the faith of the Christian
Church,--the one at Cæsarea, the one at Antioch, the one at
Alexandria, the one at Edessa. That eminent light of the early church,
Origen, who so ably and successfully maintained the claims of
Christianity against the abusive attacks of the heathen Celsus, was a
Universalist. So was Alexander, bishop of Jerusalem, and Gregory
Thaumaturgus, bishop of Neocæsarea; and so were the most distinguished
by piety and learning of the masters of the great theological seminary
of the early Church, the Catechetical school at Alexandria. Doederlein
said that "the more profoundly learned any one was in Christian
antiquity, so much more did he cherish and defend the hope that the
suffering of the wicked would at some time come to an end."[5] And
Hagenbach, commenting on a remark of Augustine, says, "that even that
great father of Orthodoxy admitted a relative cessation of damnation."
Also, Gieseler affirms, "A belief in the unalienable power of
amendment in all intelligent beings, and the limited duration of
future punishment, was general in the West, and among the opponents of
Origen."[6] Of the very time when the influence of Origen was so great
in the Church, and when, there can be no good reason to doubt, the
doctrine of universal salvation was held by many, if not the majority
of Christians, Mr. Lecky, in his history of "Morals in Europe," says,
"The Christian community exhibited a moral purity which, if it has
been equalled, has never for a long time been surpassed."
Dr. Schaff says of the condemnation of Origen, which included the
doctrine of universal restoration, "It was a death-blow to theological
science in the Greek Church, and left it to stiffen gradually into a
mechanical traditionalism and formalism."
The increased light shed upon ecclesiastical history during the
present century shows most clearly the growth of this faith from the
first centuries of the Christian era to the present time. It has
increased with the mental and moral progress of mankind, with its best
civilization.
What is written for these pages will represent especially the rise and
progress of the Universalist Church in America. It is proper, however,
to say that the faith it represents has had growth also in other
lands. It has long been known in Great Britain, where a few churches
have made a distinct avowal of it, while individuals scattered here
and there have had strong interest in it. The Unitarians of England
generally avow it. In the Established Church, faith in the doctrine of
endless punishment is not demanded as a condition of church-membership,
while some of its most distinguished leaders have advocated with
marked ability the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God in full agreement
with the doctrine of the final reconciliation of all souls to him. We
meet with Universalism in its essential elements in Neander, the
eminent Christian historian, and in commentators and scholars in
England and on the Continent. The faith is expressed in the poetry of
Wordsworth, Tennyson, and others.[7] The able ministers Coquerel
(father and son) were advocates of it in the Reformed Church in France
(Paris). The leaven of this faith is in individuals; the doctrine is
often held and openly avowed from the pulpit and through the press, as
well as in private by a large number of persons in various communions,
who may have but little knowledge of each other, or of the advocacy of
this faith elsewhere through special organizations.
[5] Civitate Dei, lib. xxi., chap. 16.
[6] Civitate Dei, lib. xxi., chap. 16.
[7] For evidence of the many utterances of the Universalist idea in
the literature of the past, the reader is referred to the volume
entitled "A Cloud of Witnesses," by Rev. John W. Hanson, D. D.,
Chicago, 1880.