God is infinite, and therefore he
will save all his rational creatures through Christ, his Son and
Ambassador. Man suffers in this world the natural consequences of his
wayward conduct; but when the penalty is once inflicted, there is no
need of vengeance. The chief end of suffering in the present life is
man's improvement and restoration to perfect happiness. Pain ordained
for its own sake, and perpetuated to all eternity, would be a proof of
infinite malignity. By virtue of God's benevolence, man's suffering has
a beneficent element, and must therefore be temporary and result in
good.[268] When Christ comes to raise the dead, he will relieve from
misery all the sons of men, give them a new life, and take them to
himself.[269]

The adherents of Universalism insist upon philanthropy and the
brotherhood of man. They hold that orthodox theology fosters harsh
notions of God's character, fills the mind with superstition, and is the
source of some of the most flagrant evils of the present age. "We
regret," says one of their writers, "that the acknowledged faith and
opinions have done no more to elevate the affections, and improve the
condition of man. They have utterly failed to correct the heart or the
life. They have disturbed his present peace, and darkened his prospects
for the future. Thousands of the young and innocent have been induced to
relinquish whatever is most beautiful in life--to give up all that
renders religion attractive and divine, for a miserable superstition,
which, like the Upas, fills the very atmosphere with death. I am
reminded that this dark theology, like a great idol, has been rolling
its ponderous car over the world for ages--I follow its desolating
track, by the wreck of noble minds--by the fearful wail of the lost
spirit, and the crushed hopes and affections of those I love! Oh! when I
look at this picture, drawn with the pencil of reality, in all its deep
shadows and startling colors, the brain is oppressed and the heart is
sick; and while I would stifle the inquiry, it finds an utterance:--In
the name of reason, of humanity and heaven, is there no hope for
man?"[270]

This declamatory lament over the theology of the evangelical Christian
church is a repetition of an old skeptical charge. It is the expression
of a spirit similar to that which animated the German Rationalists,
prompted the criticism of Colenso and of the _Essays and Reviews_, and
is now ready to welcome any effort that may pr