Fifty Notable Years: Views of the Ministry of Christian Universalism During the Last Half-Century; with Biographical SketchesAdams, John G. (John Greenleaf)
Religion
Fifty Notable Years: Views of the Ministry of Christian Universalism During the Last Half-Century; with Biographical Sketches
Adams, John G. (John Greenleaf)
Universalism; Universalist Church -- Biography; Universalists -- Biography; Universalists -- United States -- History
A well-remembered elder of apostolic aspect and spirit was the Rev.
SETH STETSON, born in Kingston, Mass., in 1776, and dying at the age
of ninety-one in Brunswick, Me. He was reared in the faith of the
Puritan fathers, near the old Plymouth rock; learned the trade of a
ship-carpenter, emigrated to Maine, gave himself to much study,
entered the Congregationalist ministry, and was pastor in Maine and
Massachusetts for some years. When the Unitarian controversy arose in
New England, he became deeply interested in it, accepted Unitarianism
as the truth of God, preached it as a missionary, and soon saw clearly
the doctrine of the salvation of all men as a revelation of the
Scriptures. He was minister of this faith in Charlestown and Salem,
Mass., and afterwards had several pastorates in Maine. His heart and
life were full of the spirit of the great Christian Master.
Universalism to him was not only a divine word, but a regenerative
power. The love which it inculcated he possessed and exercised. His
heavenly spirit beaming from his pleasant countenance and pervading
his sweet conversation made him welcome everywhere. What the New
Testament says of another was applicable to him: "A good man, and full
of the Holy Ghost, and of faith."
Rev. WILLIAM BELL, son of a Calvinistic clergyman, was for many years
an active advocate of the Universalist faith. The rigid theology of
his father had the tendency to push him into Deism, until the light of
the greater Gospel broke upon his mind. After years spent in
mechanical pursuits, with a moderate education, under the instruction
of the senior Rev. Hosea Ballou, he began to preach, obtained
fellowship, and spent the first ten years of his ministry in New
Hampshire and Vermont. Subsequently he became editor of the "Watchman
and Christian Repository," at Woodstock, Vt., and in after years of
the "Star of Bethlehem," in Lowell, Mass. He preached much up to his
seventy-eighth year, retaining his vigor of body and mind. He was
plain and direct in his style as a preacher, keen in his expositions
of what he deemed error, a good logician, strongly doctrinal in his
discourses, and deeply religious in feeling. One of the last occasions
of his speaking in public was at the Centennial Convention in
Gloucester in 1870. Near the close of his life he wrote a strong and
searching letter to Rev. Henry Ward Beecher in review of a sermon on
future punishment published by him. He died in Boston in 1871.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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