Biography of Rev. Hosea Ballou

Again Mr. Ballou says: —

"The preacher of the old school exhorts his hearers, above all things, to the practice of the most rigid self-denial; and assures them that God will be highly pleased with their abstaining from those pleasures which he has placed within their reach. The most innocent amusements, the most harmless recreations, he declaims against with the utmost vehemence, as damning sins. He considers religion essentially to consist in a perpetual effort to suppress and eradicate that propensity to acquire temporal happiness which the God of nature has made to be the spring of our actions. But on no subject does he delight to dwell so much as on the future punishment of the wicked and impenitent. He dresses up the Father of the universe in the awful robes of eternal wrath and unbounded indignation, filled with incessant anger at the crimes of the wicked, exerting infinite wisdom in devising the modes and augmenting the severity of their punishment.

"The eternal din of future punishment soon loses all effect in frightening the people, and has no influence but to impress a melancholy gloom on their minds. Mankind are to be animated to strive to enter the gates of heaven by the love of God and of goodness. He who attempts it through fear of damnation exhibits no evidence of holiness of heart. As well may we call a man honest who, having an inclination to steal, refrains for fear of the whip, as we may a man religious, who, having vicious inclinations, restrains them, and conforms to the exteriors of religion, for the purpose of escaping the flames of hell. It is matter of much regret that the amiable religion of Christianity should be so disfigured and misrepresented as to deprive many people of the happiness of enjoying it. Jesus Christ has in the clearest manner inculcated those duties which are productive of the highest moral felicity, and consistent with all the innocent enjoyments to which we are impelled by the dictates of nature. Religion, when fairly considered in its genuine simplicity and uncorrupted state, is the source of endless rapture and delight. But, when corrupted with denials, mortifications, and a punctilious observance of external rites, it assumes a form disgusting to men of taste, and a relish for social happiness, and is productive of the most destructive consequences. It drives one part of mankind into the practice of superstition, hypocrisy and bigotry; and, by exciting a distaste and aversion in the minds of the other part, it excludes them from the rational pleasure arising from the practice of genuine religion. The road to heaven is pleasant and delightful, if mankind will go the right way; and certainly God will bid the saint as sincere a welcome to the realms of immortal felicity who has in the journey of life tasted the temporal delights of innocence, as he will him who has abstained from them. Why, then, should we leave the path that is strewed with flowers and roses, for the purpose of going in another through a wilderness beset with thorns and briars, when both parts will terminate in the same happy country?"

People listen to the dogmas of the schools, and are filled with awful forebodings; terror is the predominating principle in their bosoms, and sorrow takes possession of their hearts, speaking out from their faithful countenances in sadness. How far is the true influence of the gospel from inducing such results as this! Mr. Ballou believed, with Fenelon, that "true piety hath in it nothing weak, nothing sad, nothing constrained. It enlarges the heart; it is simple, free, and attractive." If this were not the true nature of the gospel, how could there be "peace and joy in believing"?

He held that the true way to cleanse the hardened and rebellious heart is to inundate it with a deluge of love, the only weapon of Omnipotence. Reason with the sinner, he will meet you with subtle argument; threaten him, and he will meet you blow for blow; against future interest he will adroitly balance present pleasure. The human heart rises against severity or oppression, while it is soothed by gentleness, as the waves of the ocean rise in proportion to the violence of the winds, and sink with the breeze, until it becomes a gentle zephyr, into mildness and serenity. Love, the warm sunshine of our existence, subdues the sinner at once; there is not one in a thousand whose heart is so hardened that its genial warmth will not melt it. True it is that force can subdue numbers, cunning conquers force, intellect can master cunning, but love conquers all. There is a vast difference between a wounded heart and a contrite spirit. You may break ice by force into a thousand pieces, – it is ice still; but expose it to the warm sun, and behold! how quickly it will melt!

We have enlarged somewhat upon this doctrine of divine love, and trust that our readers will bear with us in our desultory career, since this principle is the fundamental basis of Universalism, – the starting-point and the goal, the Alpha and the Omega, of Mr. Ballou's spiritual experience and teaching. By it he reconciled the impulses of his heart and the promptings of his intellect. The principle of God's perfect, unchanging and eternal love of man, was the great discovery of his earliest manhood, the object of his self-imposed mission, the inspiration and solace of his labors, the spirit and joy of his existence. His adamantine belief in this great idea, daily strengthening by the study of God's works and word, was his shield and spear. It touched his lips with living fire, as he stood in the pulpit, or beneath the blue canopy of heaven, where he often preached; in the solitude of his study, in the busy haunts of men, it fed the flickering lamp of life when it waned with severe exertion, and it shone like the brightest star of heaven on his dying bed. It was no solitary joy; the treasure he had found he journeyed through the land to share with others. From his lips the glad tidings rang through every nook and corner; and he lived, as we have seen, long enough to hear the accents caught up by the willing and faithful watchmen of the gospel, and the cry of "All's well!" echo from port to port, from battlement to battlement, on the castles of Zion, through the vast circumference of his native land. He saw his denominational congregation swollen from a little band of eager listeners to an auditory numbering hundreds of thousands. He saw the shadows of unbelief flying from the face of truth, as the mist of morning disappears before the rising sun. And he felt joyful, but not proud or elated, in the consciousness that his sacred mission had been crowned with such complete success, and that multitudes recognized the truth which he first enunciated, that the law of God was the law of love.

But let us give place here to his own words, beautifully expressed, and illustrating his belief, and the spirit of his doctrine, as appears in a poem he wrote upon this theme, some years since. It is entitled

GOD IS LOVE"When lovely Spring, with flowery wreaths,Comes on young Zephyr's wing,And every bird soft music breathes,'Tis love that makes them sing.Love blossoms on the forest trees,And paints each garden flower,Gives honey to the laboring beesIn every sylvan bower.Love breathes in every wind that blows,And fragrance fills the air;Meanders in each stream that flows,Inviting pleasures there.Love brings the golden harvest in,And fills her stores with food;It moves ten thousand tongues to singOf universal good."

"If we believe that God so loved us that he sent his Son to die for us, we ought to love one another," he says. "Shall I not love those objects whom my God loves? Shall I not love all those for whose sins he sent his Son to be a propitiation? Most assuredly. This is a consequence naturally to be expected from our belief. I do not say that all who profess the doctrine do love one another as they ought; but I have the confidence to say that no one who possesses the real sentiment, the real principle, in his heart, can do otherwise than love all mankind. And here you will easily perceive that all the commandments of the gospel are to be obeyed. For when we love one another and love God, what duty is there that will be neglected? If this will not lead us to our duty, what will? Will terror make us do our duty? No; for, referring once more to the similitude, what drove your children away? It was believing the story they were told of your character. What brought them back? Knowing you were good. And know you not that it is the goodness of God that leadeth to repentance? Why, then, should not his goodness be preached to sinners? Why should we be told such awful stories with regard to eternity? Why should we be told that there is an everlasting state of burning, in order to induce us to love our Father in heaven? O! incongruous doctrine! Let it be banished from the world, and let the angel of the covenant proclaim the love of God to mankind; and may the world be converted. Man will then love his fellow-man; we shall all see that we are the children of God, that we are all the objects of God's love, and all the objects of our Saviour's grace. Believe this truth, treasure it up in your hearts, let your affections move with assent, love God and love one another, and the God of love and peace shall be with you."

All his writings and all of his conversation, both public and private, were thoroughly imbued with this belief and principle of universal love; it ran like a golden stratum through all his life and conduct, imbuing every sentiment and every thought. His doctrine was such that a realizing sense of its character must invariably thus affect the firm and relying believer. He never held forth dark threats, nor adopted, like many preachers about him, the doleful tones of grief when he talked about religion. "If good people," says Archbishop Usher, "would make their goodness agreeable, and smile instead of frowning in their virtue, how many would they win to the good cause!" Mr. Ballou was affected, in his cheerful and happy belief of universal salvation, like Haydn, who, in answer to a query of the poet Carpani, how it happened that his church music was ever of an animating and cheerful character, answered, – "I cannot make it otherwise. I write according to the thoughts which I feel; – when I think upon God, my heart is so full of joy that the notes dance and leap as it were from my pen."

How many there are among us who, the moment the subject of religion is mentioned, put on long faces, and talk as if they were mourning their own lot and that of all creation, "in hopes to merit heaven by making earth a hell!" Such people, by their example and bearing, would lead us to believe that churches are institutions reared for the purpose of encouraging long faces and dyspepsia, instead of pure altars from whence may ascend the glad incense of grateful hearts. How strongly it is impressed upon us that "God loves the cheerful giver!" and did not Christ reproach the Pharisees for disfiguring their faces with a sad countenance? To use the forcible language of another, they make of themselves "Hypocrites, who, to persuade men that angels lodge in their hearts, hang out a devil for a sign in their countenances." "It is quite deplorable," says Lady Morgan, "to see how many rational creatures, or at least who are thought so, mistake suffering for sanctity, and think a sad face and a gloomy habit of mind propitious offerings to that Deity whose works are all light and lustre, and harmony and loveliness."

Such was the philosophy of the subject of these memoirs, such his religion, such the doctrine which he taught. He found no cause for sorrow in his belief, but a never-failing fountain of joy ever welled up in his breast, pure and sparkling.

Mr. Ballou's religious belief, the faith which he promulgated with such zeal and wonderful effect, can be summed up in a few words. He held that God judges the human family in the earth; that every man must receive according to the sin he hath done, and that there is no respect of persons. That the "righteous shall be recompensed in the earth, much more the wicked and the sinner." That the future state of existence will be one of unalloyed happiness for the whole human family. That God is a being who governs the world with a parent's regard, and not with the wrath of a tyrant; that the world could be led to love him, but never driven to do it through fear. That love, not wrath, should be preached to the people. That all punishment is designed by the Divine Spirit for the reformation of the sinner, and consequently must take place where the sin is committed. That the reward of good deeds is to encourage well doing, and must come when and where the worthy acts are done. He believed in no more dreadful hell than is produced by the consequences of sin about us, with the still, bitter gnawings of conscience; and in no sweeter or more desirable reward than an approving conscience, and the natural consequences of doing good. He taught that man must be saved from his sins, not from the punishment of them, —that is impossible, – and that to be happy we must "do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God."

He believed that, in order to prove that misery will exist in the future or eternal state, it must first be made to appear that sin will exist in that state. But this he did not believe could be proved from any scriptural testimony; on the contrary, he was fully convinced that the Bible taught that "He that is dead is freed from sin." To quote his own words on this point: "We have shown, in order for justice to require the endless misery of any moral being, it must, of necessity, require the endless continuance of sin, than which nothing can be more absurd." Again he says: "We have sufficiently argued that man cannot be miserable in consequence of moral condemnation, any longer than he is, in a moral sense, a sinner." And we have often heard him make the remark, in regard to limited future punishment, that if any one would produce but only one passage of scripture which proves, beyond a reasonable doubt, that sin or the sinner will exist, as such, in the eternal, immortal state, then I give up my doctrine of no future punishment; but until this is done, I shall hold to the doctrine that the Scriptures do not teach the principle even of a limited future punishment. Mr. Ballou would not allow analogy to take the place of scriptural proof on so important a subject as the destiny of man in the immortal state. He had nothing to do with mere assertions, which had not a "thus saith the Lord" for their support, on any doctrinal point.

This feature of his mind cannot be too strongly insisted upon. He was not content with relying on the spirit of the Scriptures, which would have fully sustained his doctrine, but he conciliated the spirit and the letter, and rested every proposition he advanced on this immutable and impregnable basis. If ever a man strictly obeyed the injunction to "search the Scriptures," it was Mr. Ballou. They were the armor from which he drew the shield that sheltered him in conflict, and all the shafts that garnished his quiver. He had the very words of Christ and his apostles for every item of his creed, and such creed alone would he accept as might be adapted to this standard. He was not one of those self-complacent and easy theorists, who readily support their favorite doctrine by a few ambiguous texts, or an arbitrary construction of a mooted passage. He was far too conscientious for this; the language of learned commentators, however elegant the phraseology and plausible the reason, never satisfied him. His standard was fixed in the Bible.

There was little of the enthusiast, – to use the term in its common acceptation, – nothing of the bigot and fanatic, in his nature. He first convinced himself of the truth of his ideas; he reflected and pondered them deeply by himself, in some of those abstracted moods peculiar to him, examining them in every light, trying them by every test, dispassionately and calmly; and then gave them to the world, armed at all points, and ready for defence against attack. And how prompt and ready he was to defend what he had satisfied himself was the truth, we need not reiterate here. The language in which he enforced his arguments was simple and clear, because his ideas were so. They needed not the tinsel garb of rhetoric, the flowers of a refined oratory, to make them presentable to the world; they needed no foreign or artificial aid; – no, they stood forth clear, simple, strong, arrayed in the garb and radiant with the light of truth and of nature. They stood the test of public scrutiny, because they had been refined in the alembic of his own severe and critical mind. This simplicity, which is fast becoming an old-fashioned virtue, commended the preacher to the earnest seekers after truth. It is a pretty fair inference to arrive at, when you hear a religion preached which requires disguise and ornament, that the truth is not in it. Where truth is there need be no such garbing; it is only error that requires to be gilded, like the covering to bitter pills, used to render them sweet. The gospel of Christ appeals to the judgment, not to the taste.

In relation to the argument of analogy, as used to prove the doctrine of punishment in a future state, we subjoin the following, in his own words: – "Another ground on which the advocates of a future state of rewards and punishments place much dependence for the support of the doctrine, they denominate analogy. We think it too hazardous to attempt anything like an accurate statement of the particular arguments, which are made to depend on this principle, in favor of this doctrine; for we might be liable to some mistakes, which would represent the views of its advocates differently from their mode of representing them. Our liability to misrepresent in such an attempt seems unavoidable, on account of the fact that there has been nothing like a system of reasoning yet exhibited on the general subject. We feel safe, however, in saying, that, as far as we have been informed, those who rely on what they call analogy to support the doctrine of future retribution, hold that, in all respects which are necessary to carry sin and its miseries into the future state, that state will be analogous to this mode of being. So that, reasoning from analogy, as moral agents sin, and thereby render themselves miserable in this world, the same moral agents may continue to do the same in the world to come. In connection with this argument it is urged, that, as it is evident to our senses that sin often escapes a just retribution in this world, it must be recompensed in another state, or divine justice must forever be deprived of its claims.

"On reasonings of such a character, we shall use the freedom to say, that they appear to have no higher authority than mere human speculations injudiciously managed. That they are nothing more than simple speculations, is evident from the fact that they are not founded on any divine authority. We presume that their own advocates never ventured to support them by scripture authority. And that they are managed injudiciously, is very apparent from the circumstances, that while they profess to be justified by the principle of analogy, they are a direct denial of the very analogy on which they depend. Theologians who endeavor to exert an influence over the minds of people by means of these speculations, are constantly urging that in this world we see sin procuring for its agents the riches and honors of the world, while it escapes judicial detection, and goes unpunished. Now, if they were consistent with their analogy and with themselves, they would see at once that in the next state of existence sin will procure for its agents the riches and honors of that world, and there, as well as here, escape judicial detection, and go unpunished. They would likewise see that as divine justice can quiet its own claims in this world, without administering a full and adequate retribution of human conduct, it may do the same in the future state. In this way we might proceed and make the future state precisely like the present; for we have no more authority for carrying sin and its miseries into a future world, than we have for carrying all other things into that state which we find in this. Reasoning from all that we know, we must believe that, so long as men sin, they will do so from the beguiling power of temptation. If, then, we believe that sin will exist in the future state, we must suppose that temptation will there act on the mind with a deceiving influence. In this world the wicked are allured with the hopes of temporal gain, and these attractions are strengthened by the belief that crime will not be detected, and that punishment will be avoided. Were it not for these hopes and allurements, no wrong-doing would be practised in this world; and to suppose that we shall transgress the law of God in the future world, without any temptation, is a speculation altogether arbitrary and capricious, as well as contrary to analogy."

"Of late, the writer of this," says Mr. Ballou, in one of his last published sermons, "has seen an inclination, in some of the professed preachers of Universalism, to adopt some of the peculiar opinions of our Unitarian fraternity. Among other things, is the opinion that men carry into the next world the imperfections of this; so that their moral condition hereafter will depend on the characters they form while here in the flesh; but that they may and will improve and progress in virtue and holiness in the spirit world. This opinion being rather newly adopted, and as it seems to ingratiate them into favor with Unitarians, it is quite natural for such preachers to devote not a small share of public labor to lead the minds of their hearers to the adoption of such views of the future state. Whenever the writer of this discourse comes in contact with these labors and opinions, he feels it to be his duty, in a friendly, brotherly, and candid manner, to endeavor to bring them to the test of some acknowledged standard. It is worthy of consideration, that the New Testament gives us but little on the subject of man's future state. There can be no doubt but Jesus was known to believe and preach a doctrine embracing the fact of the resurrection, and an immortal state for the human family. All this is clearly manifested by the question asked him by the Sadducees respecting the resurrection. In the answer which Jesus returned, we have all which gives us any account respecting the state of man hereafter which was spoken by him. In this answer, we are told the following facts: – 1st. That, in the future world, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage. 2d. That, in that state, men will be the children of God, being the children of the resurrection. 3d. That they will be equal unto the angels, and that they can die no more. 4th. That the doctrine of the resurrection was shown by Moses, and that God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for we all live unto him. St. Paul says more on the subject of the resurrection, and of the future state, than did Jesus. He says, 'As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.' He also distinguishes man's state and condition in the future or resurrection state, from his condition here, as follows: – 'It is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption: it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power: it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.' Thus we are taught that our future state will differ from the present as incorruption differs from corruption; as glory differs from dishonor; as power differs from weakness; as a spiritual body differs from a natural body. Now, if we allow ourselves to carry our speculations respecting our future state not only beyond all the Scriptures say on the subject, but so as to adopt distinctions in that state, which evidently conflict with the divine Word, do we not say, by so doing, that divine Revelation is not only incomplete, but also inaccurate?"

He believed that all those promises which give the assurance of the final holiness and happiness of the entire race of man depend solely on the will and power and goodness of God, and not on any conditions for the creature to perform. While dwelling upon this theme, which he delighted to do, he says: – "Let us pass to the prophecies of Isaiah; see Chap. 25: 6, 7, 8.

"'And in this mountain shall the Lord of Hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things. * * * And he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the Lord hath spoken it.' No one will doubt that the provisions here spoken of are those which are provided in the gospel of salvation, – made for all people. The vail of darkness which is over all people is to be taken away. Death is to be swallowed up in victory, and tears wiped from off all faces. The rebuke of God's people shall be taken from off all the earth. And the proof is in the above passage, 'for the Lord hath spoken it.'"