TENDENCY OF UNIVERSALISM.
T
THATthe obvious tendency of Universalism is irreligious; that it is opposed to holiness, to reformation of life; that it is in eternal hostility to all efforts to make the world better; that it paralyzes and neutralizes the efforts of men to serve God—is one of the most manifest impressions upon the mind, both from the theory itself, and from the history of its practical workings among men. No pretended system in our time has been characterized by such daring and unblushing effrontery. It comes forward under a pretense of faith, but ridicules the most awful and fearful things which that faith reveals. It discards the eternal discriminations which the faith of the Lord Jesus maintains between the righteous and the wicked—between those who serve God and those who serve him not—between the vice and virtue—except the reward of one and the punishment of the other, received in this life. It proposes to believe the Bible, and would have men believe that it teaches that he who was an atheist, a deist, and a scoffer at all that God has said, and a blasphemer of the name of God till he breathed the last breath, shall be received up into glory, and seated down with the holy martyrs of Jesus, and enjoy God forever! No other system has so far imposed upon the credulity of mankind, as to face the world, as well as the heavens, and declare that the lake of fire prepared for thedevil and his angels, where the beast and the false prophet shall be tormented day and night, forever and ever—thegehenaof fire, where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched—is in this world, and that the wicked we see are actually enduring its punishments!
No infidel desires any better opposition to religion than this. No man who hates the Bible, and wishes its influence upon the world counteracted, desires any more effectual method of doing it than this, so far as men will receive it. Those who fall under its influence will neither worship God nor keep his commandments. Atheism itself has all the incentives to a righteous life found in this system, and may be trusted just as far. Its influence is to harden the heart, and fill the world with impenitence and indifference.