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.
"An able minister of the New Testament" was Rev. Calvin Gardner, a native of Hingham, Mass., and pastor in Charlestown, Duxbury, Lowell, and Provincetown, Mass., and for twenty years in Waterville, Me. In early life he wrought at his trade in one of the mechanic arts. Becoming interested in the doctrine of Universal Salvation, he entered the ministry in 1825. He was a reader and thinker, a sound theologian, and forcible preacher. He was always welcomed at associations and conventions, and listened to with interest by those who came to be fed with the plain and wholesome food of the Gospel. He was a genial companion and high-minded man. He passed suddenly away by death while seated in a store which he had entered but a little while before.
CHAPTER XIV.
SKETCHES OF MINISTERS—continued.
The weapons which your hands have found
Are those which Heaven itself has wrought,
Light, Truth and Love;—your battle-ground
The free, broad field of thought.
Whittier.