Traveled to Memphis, where I spoke six times. Delivered a discourse on the occasion of the death of C. S. Webber, who had departed this life about one year previous. He was from Ohio, and had labored in Missouri two years. The good cause lost an active and efficient laborer in his death. He was untiring in his efforts, and it was his delight to proclaim the unsearchable riches of heaven. At a subsequent visit to this place, a clergyman arose in the congregation, and propounded some thirty or forty questions, which he had written for the occasion, and desired me to answer them, which I did as I best could.
“You teach that punishment is designed to reform the sinner. What evidence is there that you are correct?”
“Every sorrow, every pain, resulting from transgression, is a voice of God telling the offender that he has done wrong, has violated a law of the Creator, and is on the open road to ruin, and urges him to retrace his steps. It is a thunder-clap from the Almighty, reverberating through the soul and body of the transgressor, telling him of his prodigality, warning him to flee from the wrath to come, and begging him to return to truth and duty. Pain is as clearly and as certainly the voice of God condemning vice, and urging the offender to abandon the forbidden path, and walk in virtue’s ways, as any word ever spoken by a living prophet. It is God speaking directly to man, face to face.
“Happiness also being the natural and sure result of virtue, is a divine approbation of the christian life; it is the voice of God sanctioning virtue and encouraging the good man in righteousness. And this approbation of virtue, and condemnation of vice, is a revelation to man in all climes and ages. It is older than the written Bible, and is proclaimed to all the sons and daughters of earth, ‘Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.’ Ps. xix. 2, 3.
“True, it is often drowned in the clamor of passion, disregarded by the ignorant, and unheeded by the thoughtless; but its testimony against all wrong, and for all right, constantly sounding in the ears, and being telegraphed through the soul and body of every human being, has ever more or less curbed the passions of the vicious, and promoted righteousness. Happiness is man’s end and aim. For that he toils from the cradle to the grave; and he is assured from his own experience, which is the revelation from God to man I have been speaking of, that vice surely brings misery, and virtue surely brings happiness. This fact in every one’s experience has every where lessened vice and increased virtue, notwithstanding passion, ignorance, false philosophy, and false religion—flesh and the devil—have blasphemously called it delusion, irreligion, infidelity.”
“You remarked in your first discourse, that there is an analogy between the earth and man. Is not that infidelity?”
“I can see no infidelity in it. It is best not to be afraid of the truth. That there is a striking analogy between man’s physical organism, and the earth of which it is a product, is certainly correct. 1. The rock of the earth corresponds to the bones in the human frame. 2. The dust covering the rocky skeleton of the earth corresponds to the flesh spread over these bones. 3. The veins of water meandering through the earth answer to the purple currents coursing every part of the body. 4. The earth has internal fires, the body has internal heat. 5. The hair of the head, which is a vegetable, corresponds to the vegetable growth covering the earth. 6. The earth is even sometimes sick, like man, and is only relieved by vomiting forth its feverish contents. 7. The earth is surrounded by an atmosphere; philosophers tell us, that every man is enveloped in an atmosphere, emenating from his body. 8. The earth was once in a ruder condition than it is now; man was once coarser, more brutal than he is at the present time. 9. Man had a beginning—‘in the beginning God made the heavens and the earth.’ 10. This mortal body must die, be decomposed, return to the source whence it came; will not this earth die, be decomposed, and return whence it came? The gentleman may call this infidelity if he pleases. He can then finish the chapter of folly by calling summer, winter; heat, cold; light, darkness; truth, error; virtue, vice; and God, devil.”
A Presbyterian minister replied to one of my discourses, and after answering his objections, I proceeded southward, and lectured in Sand Hill, Milford, Edina and Newark. Subsequently I had an appointment to debate four days with a man in Newark. He was to try to sustain this proposition—“Universalism is no better than infidelity.” But it being impossible for me to reach there at the appointed time, the discussion did not take place, and I never could induce him afterwards to discuss that proposition. I delivered a series of discourses in Newark soon after this disappointment, and thus noticed the gentleman’s proposition:
Mr. Matlock, I understand, when he was here to debate with me, told you in what respect “Universalism is no better than infidelity.” Universalism, he made out, agrees in one or two points with infidelity, therefore he wisely concluded that the whole system is no better than infidelity. Let us see what Campbellism is according to this rule. Mormonism says, there is a God, and that he will torment millions of mankind eternally; Campbellism says the same, therefore Campbellism is no better than Mormonism, and Mr. Matlock might as well go to Salt Lake and marry a dozen of his Mormon sisters. Paganism says, there is a burning hell for the wicked; Campbellism says there is a burning hell for the wicked, therefore Campbellism is no better than Paganism, and Mr. Matlock had better sacrifice his jackass to appease the wrath of his offended God. Catholicism teaches, that the unbaptized will all be lost; Campbellism teaches the same, therefore Campbellism is no better than Catholicism, and Mr. Matlock had better join the “mother church,” migrate to Rome, and sanctify himself by kissing the great toe of “his holiness,” the pope. Atheism tells us, that man is mortal and must die; Campbellism tells the same; Campbellism, then, is no better than Atheism.
But no system can be farther from infidelity than Universalism. It is all aglow with wisdom, justice, mercy, goodness, holiness, truth and virtue. It teaches, that there is a God who rules in heaven and on earth, that man is in his image, and in imitating him we derive our chief good, and that we are destined to approximate his adorable perfections forever and ever. A person must have a dark and deformed mind, who can denounce that spiritual system, and brand it with infidelity.