#126 – FUNDAMENTALS OR BASIS OF BELIEF – Thomas Griffith

“We will get good out of evil. Our gracious Educator does evolve for us out of corruption, temptation and sin, new purposes, new skill, new triumphs. 

Beyond the overruling of intermediate evil into subserviency to a higher good, what has been superinduced as a transition state of things is therefore seen to be necessary only for a time. It will pass away with the functions which it is made to fulfill. It will at last be superseded by the highest good for everyone.”

#128 - This is a thrilling poem by Matthew Arnold, keeping in mind the following fact.

Universalism was The Prevailing Doctrine Of The Christian Church During Its First Five Hundred Years

hellbusters.8m.com/updcontents.html 

As students of the history of Christian doctrine know, among believers in eternal torment, Tertullian was one of the most extreme. That is why I think this poem is so powerful. It sent a thrill up and down my spine.  

“He saves the sheep, the goats he doth not save!”

So rang Tertullian’s sentence, on the side

Of that unpitying Phrygian sect which cried, --

“Him can no fount of fresh forgiveness lave

Who sins, once washed by the baptismal wave!”

So spake the fierce Tertullian. But she sighed,

The infant church, of love she felt the tide

Stream on her from her Lord’s yet recent grave,

And then she smiled, and in the Catacombs,

With eye suffused, but heart inspired true,

On those walls subterranean, where she hid

Her head in ignominy, death and tombs,

She her Good Shepherd’s hasty image drew,

And on His shoulders, not a lamb, a kid.

#130 – FROM A SERMON ON UNIVERSALISM – Stopford A. Brooke

“That Christ should have descended to assume the nature of all men, only to cast them away as refuse to be burned, does so contradict His revelation that it is no wonder that the idea of everlasting damnation should have destroyed men’s belief. 

No, the earthly dead will move on, a mighty stream to mingle in the ocean of the righteousness of God, on that far off but certain day when God will be All in all.”

#132 – THE SHAKING OF HEAVEN AND EARTH – Charles Kingsley

“We do not deny that the wages of sin is death. We do not deny the necessity and certainty of punishment. Only tell us not that it must be endless, and thereby destroy its whole purpose. We too believe in an eternal fire, but we believe its existence to be not a curse but a blessing. That fire is God Himself Who taketh away the sins of the world, and of Whom it is therefore written, ‘Our God is a consuming fire.”

#134 – DISPUTED POINTS – George Dawson

“Take the doctrine in which most of you were brought up – that every man who is not saved will go to hell, and that hell is a constant fire whereunto a man must be condemned forever. 

I am told this is in the Scriptures. I can’t find it; but if it were there I would not believe it. I was told that it was so, and I have no doubt I said it was so. But now I disbelieve it. If this is backsliding, I will backslide. 

Well, how came we ever to doubt this horrific doctrine? Not that any commentator with marvelous exegesis showed us that the text did not mean that; -- for I am but little interested in the quibble that the fire burns forever, but that the thing put into the fire burn only so long as it is capable of burning. 

What has put hell fire out is a better understanding of God, and a fuller comprehension of the quality of God’s love. The love of God conquers the assertion of orthodoxy.”