"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.