Christianity is a universal religion. Herein is its pre-eminence. It is for man everywhere and in all time. No other religion has so clearly asserted this claim for itself, and no other promises to do so much for mankind. True, it has had to make its way against the errors and prejudices and corruptions of the world. It has been mixed with human errors, and has been professed, taught, and practised in too many instances by those who have failed to realize clearly the heavenliness of its spirit, and its far-reaching, regenerative, and overcoming power. Its earliest promulgators failed to see at first this grand characteristic of its universality. An able Christian historian has written: "Nothing is more remarkable than to see the horizon of the Apostles gradually receding, and, instead of resting on the borders of the Holy Land, comprehending at length the whole world; barrier after barrier falling down before the superior wisdom which was infused into their minds; first, the proselytes of the gate, the foreign conformists to Judaism, and, ere long, the Gentiles themselves admitted within the pale; until Christianity stood forth, demanded the homage, and promised its rewards to the faith of the whole human race; proclaimed itself in language which the world had as yet never heard, the one, true universal religion."[3] Rev. Dr. Gerhard Uhlhorn, of Germany, in his able work, "The Conflict of Christianity with Heathenism," speaking of the early development of Christianity in the Roman Empire, calls it the first step to its universalism. "Itself passing out from the ancient narrowness into a world-wide breadth of thought and life, the old world became capable of accepting the Universalism of Christianity."[4] The old world and the new have yet many steps forward to take in this pathway of a continually increasing brightness. [1] Oration of Governor Long before the municipal authorities and citizens of Boston, July 4, 1882. [2] Eph. iv. 13. [3] Milman's "History of Christianity." CHAPTER II. CHRISTIAN UNIVERSALISM. "Universalism is a living movement, organized out of the grandest ideas and spiritual facts of the universe; gathering into itself the richest and mightiest moral forces, and working towards the most positive practical ends; and a man is a Universalist, and is the better off for being a Universalist, only as some sense of what Universalism thus is, and of the force of its motives, and the reality of its work, flows down, a quickening power, into his being."--E. G. BROOKS, D. D.