, and which no
one has power to reject:

"The road to heaven is broader than the world,
And deeper than the kingdoms of the dead;
And up its ample paths the nations tread
With all their banners furl'd."

This theory contains elements, it seems to us, both of truth and
falsehood. It casts off gross mistakes, announces some fundamental
realities, overlooks, perverts, exaggerates, some essential facts
in the case. There is so much in it that is grateful and beautiful
that we cannot wonder at its reception where the tender instincts
of the heart are stronger than the stern decisions of the
conscience, where the kindly sentiments usurp the province of the
critical reason and sit in judgment upon evidence for the
construction of a dogmatic creed. We

13 Universalist Quarterly Review, vol. x. art. xvi.: Character and
its Predicates.

14 Hagenbach, Dogmengeschichte, sect. 209, note 14.

15 See Ballou, Examination of the Doctrine of Future Punishment,
pp. 152-157. Williamson, Exposition of Universalism, Sermon XL:
Nature of Salvation. Cobb, Compend. of Divinity, ch. ix. sect. 3.

cannot accept it as a whole, cannot admit its great unqualified
conclusion, not only because there is no direct evidence for it,
but because there are many potent presumptions against it. It is
not built upon the facts of our consciousness and present
experience, but is resolutely constructed in defiance of them by
an arbitrary process of assumption and inference; for since God's
perfections are as absolute now as they ever can be, and he now
permits sin and misery, there is no impossibility that they will
be permitted for a season hereafter. If they are necessary now,
they may be necessary hereafter. An experience of salvation by
all, regardless of what they do or what they leave undone, would
also defeat what we have always considered the chief final cause
of man, namely, the self determined resistance of Evil and choice
of Good, the free formation of virtuous character. The plan of a
necessary and indiscriminate redemption likewise breaks the
evident continuity of life, ignores the lineal causative power of
experience, whereby each moment partially produces and moulds the
next, destroys the probationary nature of our lot, and palsies the
strength of moral motive. It is furthermore the height of
injustice, awarding to all men the same condition, remorselessly
swallowing up their infinite differences, making sin and virtue,
sloth and toil,