Bisbee's Why I Am A Universalist, part two

These great scriptural principles which were taught me in that good old Methodist Sunday school set my soul on fire with a divine optimism which thrilled me with the joy and gladness and glory of it. But I presently discovered that my enthusiasm. For the complete success of the Gospel did not meet with response from the brethren in the Church, and my own father and mother were pained at my lapse into “the dangerous heresy of Universalism.” But there was where the Gospel of Jesus Christ took me. I could not resist. I must go and tell the glad tidings to others.

This belief in the final outcome of good founded on the revelation of the Holy Scriptures, found confirmation in the desire of my affections and demand of my reason. This great creation coming from a Being of infinite goodness, its purpose must be good; coming from a Being of infinite wisdom, its plan must be wise; and the execution of that plan, being in the hands of infinite power, must be successful and insure the “one far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves.”

Perhaps the one element which most contributed to shaping and perpetuating my Universalism was this conception of a successful creation, a victorious Christ, a triumphant God. Anything less than this seemed a contradiction of divine revelation and a violation of the holiest aspiration of the human soul. While the vision of such a consummation ? “when every knee should bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord” ? seemed alone to being harmony into a discordant universe, and solve alike the problems of the present and the future.

emember, I am to tell you why I am a Universalist, describe as best I can, the experience of my own soul, trace, if possible, before you the peculiar pathway which leads me to my God, not to ask you to follow in my footsteps; only, it may be, to win you to see that when you have come up through your path to your God, we may be found at last kneeling side by side at the feet of our common Heavenly Father.