UNIVERSALISM by Charles Grandison Finney

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 20, 1880

UNIVERSALISM.

By Charles Grandison Finney

UNIVERSALISM is an old refuge of lies. And here let me give you a case. Being out from home in my carriage, I overtook a young man and invited him to ride. Almost immediately he told me he was a Universalist, and came out strongly in defence of his system. I said to him—"I am not well and may not live long, and I do not dare to be deceived in this matter." He said, for his part, he was sure enough of its truth. He had heard smart men say so, and prove it from scripture. I said to him—I have no objection. There is a certain train of facts which I cannot account for, if Universalism be true. I have known families, once reputed orthodox, which were then upright, moral, and justly respected. These same families I have known become loose in morals, forsake the house of God, turn to strong drink, and become fearfully vicious. Such families, I have observed, along with this change, almost always become Universalists. This is one set of facts. On the other hand, I have never known a holy, prayerful Universalist backslide into orthodoxy—forsake his Universalism and his morality and degenerate into vice and orthodoxy by one uniform and simultaneous declension. I have known men reformed from drunkenness and vice, and then become orthodox; but I have never known men reform from vice into Universalism. In short, it seems to me that thousands of facts evince a natural sympathy between vice and Universalism on the one hand, and between virtue and Orthodoxy on the other hand.—Finney.