It was a time of great change. Our union of states had just been created. Its new government was organized on the radical concept of a constitution of the people. The Bill of Rights had just been passed which protected religious freedom by law. The industrial revolution was beginning to reshape the economy. The scientific method of investigation was beginning to reveal its potential power for discovery and understanding.

Into this world was born one of the great lights of Universalism named Hosea Ballou. Hosea was born the last of eleven children on April 30th, 1771 in rural New Hampshire, about the same time as Universalist pioneer John Murray was beginning his ministry in America. Hosea's father was a dirt-poor Calvinist minister. Legend has it that the "children went without the most common necessities; it is said that little Hosea often was without underclothes, shoes and stockings even in the coldest of winters." Hosea lost his mother when he was only 20 months old. His father remarried a year later but took to raising Hosea. Because of their close relationship, Hosea had a deep love and respect for his father. Here is how Hosea described his father:

He was Puritanic and strictly religious, as he interpreted the meaning of that [Biblical] word. His mind was ever engrossed upon serious matters. But when he put his hand sometimes upon my head and told me I had done well, that the labor I had performed might have been more poorly done by older hands, or that I was a good and faithful boy, my heart was electrified beyond measure; and I remember his words and smile, even now with delight.

There was ONE dispute that he could not settle. Through his father's influence, Hosea's mind often turned to the weighty matter of sin and salvation. During their time of family prayer, his father would often pray for the children's conversion. He would name each one and fervently pray for their election. In his biography of Ballou, Ernest Cassandra puts it this way:

Hosea was well-instructed in the doctrines of Calvinism at an early age. He was taught that he, like all men, had inherited the sin of the first parents of the race and had thus come into the world totally depraved. Because of this inheritance, the greater part of men were doomed to eternal misery after death. For an elect portion of mankind, however, things would be different, for God had provided a way in which they would be saved. These fortunate ones, sometime during their lives, would feel the working of the Holy Spirit upon them: it would manifest itself in the ecstatic experience of conversion. But this experience would come to very few; it was the belief of the Baptists who surrounded Hosea that "not more than one in a thousand" would be chosen.

Hosea was his father's son, even if they differed in theology. Hosea had preaching in his blood, as did several of his brothers who had been converted to the view of Universal Salvation before he was.

In those days, anyone could decide to be a preacher. One just needed a good understanding of the Bible. Ballou made first appearance in Old Baptist Deacon Thayer's house. He took his place in the pulpit and his face flushed, his throat went dry, his knees became unsteady and drips of perspiration covered his brow and flowed down his cheeks. With great difficulty, he announced the first text from first Corinthians. He looked up to start the sermon and no word came to him (this is a preacher's greatest fear!).

Hosea went with his brother David to Brattleboro, Vermont for his second attempt. David preached in the morning and took a chance that Hosea could do the evening service. He did better this time, but not by much. He began very well but started to hesitate, then paused now and then, and about halfway through he sat down, before the end of his sermon.

Hosea was embarrassed and discouraged but kept on trying with encouragement from his friends, getting better and better. Then one day his father and two other preachers were to be in the congregation. Wanting to impress them, Hosea decided to prepare a manuscript. Unfortunately, it hurt more than it helped. During the sermon, he looked up at the congregation and lost his place in his text. After ruffling through his papers he put them aside and said, "I shall not weary your patience with these notes." He proceeded to give a great oratory and it is said his father was seen with a tear rolling down his cheek full of pride in his son.

Hosea's understanding was crafted from the popular writers of the day and Hosea's intimate familiarity with the Bible. A book popularly known as "Ethan Allen's Bible", called Reason the Only Oracle of Man, made a deep impression on Ballou. Allen's book was a product of the European Enlightenment era ushered in by the Copernican Newtonian revolution. It upheld the supremacy of the reasoning process over the revealed word of God. God had set up the universe, like a master clock-maker, and was allowing it to follow its course without interfering. Natural Laws were substituted for God's command. Although Ballou did not accept this Deist formulation just mentioned, he was persuaded by the power of the reasoning process.

John Murray, the English Universalist who preached a message much like James Relly, another early Universalist; Charles Chauncy, whose understanding of sin was expounded in his book The Salvation of All Men; and Ferdinand Oliver Petitpierre, who advocated the view of God as all-powerful and loving, all added understanding to Ballou's deepening Universalist convictions. It is Ballou's understanding of sin and salvation, in abbreviated form, I wish to bring to you now.

Ballou began with human motivation. The primary human motivation, felt Ballou, was happiness. God wants us to be happy as well. Sin he defines as the conscious broaching of one's own internal moral system. The problem is that in our quest for happiness, we stray into sin through the passions of the flesh. These passions originate with God. They are not the work of a fallen Angel. Ballou's God was infinitely good and infinitely perfect. He felt human passions were an adequate explanation for the genesis of what we call evil.

Whether creation is flawed at all is a question Ballou raises. His favorite example when preaching this sermon was the story of Joseph.

As you may recall the Biblical story, Joseph was a favorite of his father Jacob and loathed by his brothers. After having some provocative dreams, his brothers sold him into slavery to the Ishmaelites who lived in Egypt, telling their father he had been eaten by wild animals. Through seduction and deception, poor Joseph gets thrown into prison. Joseph continues being the good person he is and helps the king's butler and baker interpret their dreams when they are briefly imprisoned. Joseph's gift for interpretation reaches the King's ear two years later when he too has a troubling dream. Joseph correctly interprets his dream and becomes a valued minister of the King. Meanwhile, Jacob's family falls on hard times due to a drought. They go to Egypt for help and come before Joseph without knowing who he is. Joseph helps them and saves them from starvation.

The question arises, was it a sin to sell Joseph into slavery? The outcome was to save the family from starvation. Ballou uses this example to show us that we cannot know completely the consequences of our actions. Thus we cannot stand in judgement over God's creation. We do not know what the outcome of all the troubles of the world will be. This understanding allows Ballou to preserve his belief in God's perfection. It also preserves the perfection of God's love.

God's love for creation is unbounded. The flaws Ballou finds are in the understanding of the created. The fall of humanity comes from our turning away, not a change in God's concern for God's creatures. It is our job to reconcile ourselves with God. There are two mistaken human views. The first is that God is our enemy because we violate God's law. Ballou quotes extensively from the Bible to refute the idea that God has a changed mind about creation after the fateful apple incident in the Garden of Eden. The second human misunderstanding is that we must earn reconciliation with God by works. The finite creature cannot possibly measure up to the perfection of an infinitely good law of God.

This view of our inability to satisfy God's law, led Ballou to a surprisingly rigid deterministic view. He felt strongly that we cannot do anything to gain or to lose God's promise of salvation. Ballou had some homespun examples from everyday life to explain his opposition to salvation by works.

Ballou had been invited to preach in an inland town. The home in which he was to stay for the night was not sympathetic to the concept of Universal Salvation. Arriving at the house on Saturday afternoon, Ballou found the mistress of the house in the kitchen, mop in hand. Looking up, the woman said:

"This is Mr. Ballou, I suppose?"
"Yes, madam, my name is Ballou."
"Well, Mr. Ballou, they SAY you hold that ALL men will be saved. Do you REALLY believe that?"
"Yes, Madam, I REALLY believe it."
"Why, sir! Do you REALLY believe that all men are going to be saved, just such creatures AS THEY ARE?"
Seeing that she did not understand the nature of salvation, Ballou asked:
"What do you have in your hand, dear woman?"
"Why," she replied, laughing, "it is a mop." "Your mop? Well, what are you going to do with it?"
"I am going to mop up my floor. I always do it Saturday afternoon."
"Well, sister, I understand you. Are you going to mop it up
JUST AS IT IS?"
"Mop it up just as it is?"
"Yes, you wished to know if I hold that all men will be saved JUST AS THEY ARE. Do you intend to mop up the floor JUST AS IT IS?"
"Why," she replied, "I mop it up to clean it."
"True," said Ballou. "You do not require it to be made clean before you will consent to mop it up. God saves men to purify them; that's what salvation is designed for. God does not require men to be pure in order that he may save them."
In an even more striking illustration of his point, Ballou used this analogy:

Your child has fallen into the mire, and its body and its garments are defiled. You cleanse it, and array it in clean robes. The query is, Do you love your child because you have washed it? or, Did you wash it because you loved it?

To be in a state of sin is misery. Ballou criticized the Puritanical association of pleasure with sin. To sin was to betray one's own moral sense. This divides the self and creates suffering. A simple example might be a child stealing cookies. Before the child steals a cookie, there is nothing to fear. Harmony exists in his or her relationship with his or her mother and father. Once the child has bowed to his or her passions and taken a cookie without permission, he or she is now in a state of jeopardy. If a parent discovers the transgression, there may be punishment. Fear and separation is created in the child. The child now has an uneasiness in the company of the parent, uncertain if the love expressed before the cookie theft will endure the discovery of the child's transgression.

This is the condition of the sinner who is uncertain about God's love and fears eternal torment. Will my actions alienate my creator so that I will be cast down into the fire? (People used to lose sleep worrying about this back then!) The trouble is not with God but with the worried sinner. Ballou found the message of love again and again in the life of Jesus. It is love which overcomes sin. The devastation of sin is really our own self-rejection which is projected onto God. When we accept this love which we cannot earn, we are cleansed. Our suffering occurs when we cannot accept this love because we are afraid. Ballou's understanding of God caused him to see that this love was independent of the knowledge of Jesus. He felt it was a force that was at work unrestricted by "names, sects, denominations, people or kingdoms".

This understanding of God's love is as relevant today as it was at the turn of the 18th Century. Today we religious liberals do not toss and turn at night in fear of eternal damnation. Yet we are not free of the question, "what is my life worth?"

We live in a time of greater awareness of our limits. We are seeing that our ability to save ourselves with reason is limited. We are seeing how difficult it is for people to resolve competing interests without destructive conflict. Our studies of the human mind have shown us how limited an organism we are for change. Discoveries show that we are greatly determined by our genetics and our upbringing. Few of us are able to live a completely virtuous life. We are enticed and taunted by store windows, salespeople and advertisements. Lust, greed, hatred and envy are very contagious emotions.

If we build our self-worth on our ability to accumulate possessions, when poverty comes we will find our being empty. If we build our self-worth on our great accomplishments, when others supercede us we will feel diminished. If we build our self-worth on what we know, when we get older we will mourn our forgetfulness. If we build our self-worth on our superlative moral integrity, when we commit the slightest infraction we shall condemn ourselves. Any condition one puts on one's self-worth can be lost.

Ballou's thinking concluded that the rock upon which to build one's self-worth, is the rock of God's unconditional love. Today we use the language "The inherent worth and dignity of every person" to frame a radical respect of the human being as our first principle. This is not a statement that can be proved, it is a faith statement much like the former statement of God's unconditional love. Yet words can only imply what the heart knows. I am convinced that we do not come to faith statements so much by reason as by heartfelt personal experience. Ballou came to his understanding through experience. Ballou had a confidence in Universal Salvation that went beyond words.

To illumine what I mean, let me close with Ballou's famous example of how one comes to understand God:

I know it is frequently contended that we ought to love God for what God is, and not for what we receive from God; that we ought to love holiness for holiness's sake, and not for any advantage such a principle is to us. This is what I have often been told, but what I never could see any reason for, or propriety in. I am asked if I love an orange; I answer I never tasted of one; but then I am told I must love the orange for what it is! Now I ask, is it possible for me either to like or dislike the orange, in reality, until I taste it? Well, I taste of it and I like it. Do you like it? says my friend. Yes I reply, its flavor is exquisitely agreeable. But that will not do, says my friend; you must not like it because its taste is agreeable, but you must like it because it is an orange. If there be any propriety in what my friend says, it is out of my sight.

Copyright (c) 1995 by Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore. All rights reserved.