ndred
thousand souls constituting the Christian population of Antioch in
his day one hundred would be saved! 21 And when we read, with
shuddering soul, the calculations of Cornelius a Lapide, or the
celebrated sermon of Massillon on the "Small Number of the Saved,"
we are compelled to confess that they fairly represent the almost
universal sentiment and conviction of Christendom for more than
seventeen hundred years. A quarto volume published in London in
1680, by Du Moulin, called "Moral Reflections upon the Number of
the Elect," affirmed that not one in a million, from Adam down to
our times, shall be saved. A flaming execration blasted the whole
heathen world, 22 and a metaphysical quibble doomed ninety nine of
every hundred in Christian lands. Collect the whole relevant
theological literature of the Christian ages, from the birth of
Tertullian to the death of Jonathan Edwards, strike the average
pitch of its doctrinal temper, and you will get this result: that
in the field of human souls Satan is the harvester, God the
gleaner; hell receives the whole vintage in its wine press of
damnation, heaven obtains only a few straggling clusters plucked
for salvation. The crowded wains roll staggering into the iron
doorways of Satan's fire and brimstone barns; the redeemed
vestiges of the world crop of men are easily borne to heaven in
the arms of a few weeping angels. How different is the prevailing
tone of preaching and belief now! What a cheerful ascent of views
from the mournful passage of the dead over the river of oblivion
fancied by the Greeks, or the excruciating passage of the river of
fire painted by the Catholics, to the happy passage of the river
of balm, healing every weary bruise and sorrow, promised by the
Universalists! It is true, the old harsh exclusiveness is still
organically imbedded in the established creeds, all of which deny
the possibility of salvation beyond the little circle who vitally
appropriate the vicarious atonement of Christ; but then this is,
for the most part, a dead letter in the creeds. In the hearts and
in the candid confessions of all but one in a thousand it is
discredited and sincerely repelled as an abomination to human
nature, a reflection against God, an outrage upon the substance of
ethics. Remorseless bigots may gloat and exult over the thought
that those who reject their dogmas shall be thrust into the
roaring fire gorges of hell; but a better spirit is the spirit of
the age w