Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883, by Electrotyped and Printed by HANDY & WALTERS, 45 to 51 Rose Street, New York. PREFACE. This book was originally written when the author was quite young, but little turned of twenty,-but it was some two or three years later before he had found friends who were willing to advance the means for issuing the first 5,000 copies, an edition which many thought would never all be called for. A year, however, had not passed before the edition was entirely exhausted, and from the sale of which the author was enabled to return the money borrowed, leaving a surplus sufficient for another edition. To avoid the necessity of large editions, he was advised to have the work stereotyped which he personally supervised at Cincinnati, Ohio: From this point editions of one thousand copies each began to be issued to meet the rapidly increasing demand, until within about four years thereafter more than 40,000, copies of the work had been sold. At this time a sudden decline in the author's health prevented his personal application to the sale of the book; so he turned the plates oyer to a friend, while he sought other employment better suited to his physical recuperation. After the issue of a few more editions, the plates found their way into the hands of the Methodist Book Concern of that city whose then managers employed the Rev. W. P. Strickland, D. D., one of their well-known ministers, to write an Introduction to the work. This Introduction we deem so well written and so directly to the point, that we have concluded to retain it in the work in its present revised form. The Book-Concern continued issuing the work for several years, selling many thousand copies chiefly among the Methodist ministers and laymen in the Southern and Western States. It finally went out of print, and for more than twenty-five years has not been published. Such is the early history of this book;-such its origin, such its rise, and such its progress,-a sale at that period unparalleled in the annals of the publishing trade for a controversal work of the kind. Yet the book was not well written, viewed from a literary standpoint. It was not to have been expected under the circumstances. It grew spontaneously out of the rough soil of controversy harrowed over and over by many public debates in which the author took part with Universalist clergymen far and near, and to which he was called by different churches who had heard reports of his discussions. At that time, as is well-remembered by the elder ministers of the different denominations, the Western States abounded with Universalist ministers valerous for fight, and ready on all occasions to engage in combat with clergymen of the orthodox school, challenging them right and left and smiting them hip and thigh, few being found able to stand during a lengthy debate before the champions of this new and rapidly spreading doctrine. This was chiefly due to the fact that the liberal debaters had their numerous proof-texts well in hand and thoroughly committed to memory, so that they could rain them in torrents upon the heads of their opponents, who, in turn, though many of them excellent debaters and fine schollars, were by no means sufficiently familiar with the scriptures to cope with these skilled and drilled lancers. The result was that nine times in ten the liberal leaders came off victorious, which only added to the increasing furor with which the new doctrine was received by the masses. To meet this state of things required special preparation, which their new antagonist was not long in recognizing, and accordingly the scriptures were made a special study. The arguments employed in those discussions by the author of this work were entirely original with himself, he having up to that time never read a single book on the subject, and having attended but one public debate before entering the controversial arena. The book, like the debates, therefore, contained some bitter and acrimonious things, and besides this, many crude expressions crept into the work which ought to have been weeded out before publication, and which have, as far as possible, been pruned away in this revision. Still the author has not felt at liberty in revising the book to make it a reconstruction. He has retained the general form of the arguments unchanged, though he has tried at the same time so to tone down the style of the various discussions as to make them unobjectionable as far as possible even to the ministers whose views are opposed, many of whom are now and have been for years among the author's warmest personal friends. To add to the value and interest of the book as now revised, it has been deemed advisable to append at the conclusion of the work the author's treatise on the Immortality of The Soul, as it appeared in the first volume of his Microcosm, and also his three leading Editorials in the Second Volume of the same Magazine, entitled-Does Death End All? These papers, it is thought, may prove an appropriate termination to the discussions of the book after the critical analysis of more than 800 separate passages of scripture taken from the Old and New Testaments. That the work may be received kindly, and that it may tend in some measure to bring the church and the clergyespecially those who are inclining toward radical theological views-back to the ancient scripture landmarks, is the unfeigned wish of THE AUTHOR. INTRODUCTION BY REV. W. P. STRICKLAND, D. D. The system of belief denominated Universalism, which teaches that all men will be saved irrespective of moral character, is as old as sin itself; and grows as necessarily out of the depravity of the heart, as rank weeds are produced by a luxuriant and uncultivated soil. Perhaps no form of error has ever been devised so perfectly adapted to deceive the lovers of sin, as the one under consideration. It at once addresses itself to the depraved appetites and passions of men; and is so admirably adjusted to this end, that it inspires a fallacious hope, in which there is no reason, and for the support of which there is no evidence. Whenever the heart pleads the cause, the understanding is a very lenient and partial judge. That which men wish to be true, they require but little evidence to convince them of its truth; and, on the other hand, what they do not wish to be true, scarcely any amount of evidence is sufficient to convince them of its falsehood. The following work is a thorough but fair analysis and exposure of a system, false in all its leading features, and more dangerous in its tendencies than all other errors put together. It brings the doctrine of Universalism at once to the test of scripture truth, and carrying the war into Africa, shows up, in the sunlight of demonstration, its gross absurdities and palpable inconsistencies. The book deals in facts, any one of which is worth a volume of assertions and arguments, however plausible. The reader will find that throughout the entire work, the Bible is made its own interpreter, and the very passages on which the advocates of universal salvation rely for the support of their doctrine, are, by a true interpretation, turned directly against the system. It follows up and analyzes every exegesis, every argument, and every proposition; tearing off the veil of sophistry, and exposing the system in its true light; leaving not a single hook on which to hang a hope of salvation only through the gospel method of repentance toward God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Every orthodox minister is here furnished with a text-book on Universalism, superior to any work of the kind heretofore published; and every private Christian, by reading it, may at once discover the fallacy of that reasoning which ignores every attribute of God, except His mercy, and even destroys the character of that attribute, by requiring its exercise at the expense of, and contrary to, all the other attributes of Deity. |