Our object in this chapter is to consider the Orthodox view, and we shall not, therefore, enter into any extensive argument concerning universal salvation. We will only here indicate the general scriptural evidence in its support. The alternative to the Orthodox view of everlasting punishment is not, as we have shown, necessarily Universalism. It may be annihilation, or it may be, under the name of eternal punishment, a negative evil, being the privation of the highest kind of happiness. Still, it seems proper to suggest, if only very briefly, some reasons given by Universalists for their belief. In the Epistles of Paul there are five or six passages, which appear to teach, or to imply, an ultimate restoration of salvation of all moral beings. Among them are these:— 1. Eph. 1:9, 10. “Having made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he hath purposed in himself, that in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even in him.” The apostle is speaking of the “riches of God’s grace,” wherein “he hath _abounded_ toward us,” and gives as the proof this revelation made in Christ of a great mystery—that “in the dispensation [economy] of the fulness of times” he might bring into one (under one head) “all things in heaven and on earth.” The idea of the passage seems evidently to be that in the economy, or order, of the divine plan, which extends through indefinite periods of time, all things shall be united under one head in Christ. But if brought under one head (as the Greek word signifies), then all become Christians, all “in heaven and earth.” This would seem to be a very plain statement of a universal restoration. As such, Olshausen, one of the most Orthodox of commentators, regards it. He rejects all the explanations offered by the advocates of everlasting punishment as unsatisfactory. “It cannot be disputed,” he says, “that in it the restoration of all things seems to be again favored—a view which Paul in general, as has already been remarked (on Rom. 11:32; 1 Cor. 15:24; Gal. 3:22) says more to support than the other writers of the New Testament.” Olshausen declares the interpretations which suppose a merely external subjection of the world to Christ to be entirely inadequate, and have left unresolved the principal difficulty, which is, “how Paul could say that all have a share in redemption, if he held the common view that the numberless hosts of angels who fell, along with the far greatest part of mankind (Matt. 7:13, 14) are eternally damned, and thus shut out from the harmony of the universe.” The defenders of universal restoration, says Olshausen, “understand the harmony of the universe seriously, in its literal meaning, and seem, according to that, to be here in the right.”