During his ordination examination, a Presbyterian seminary student was being asked a series of doctrinal questions by an elderly conservative minister. He came to this question: “Do you believe in the Doctrine of the Total Depravity of the Human Soul?” His immediate smiling reply: “Yes, but I find it very difficult to live up to!” — But one of the main reasons…

Universalist ministers were often circuit riders. Hosea Ballou was one of these. There is a story told about him riding the circuit in New England, while riding over Hampshire’s craggy hills with a Baptist preacher one afternoon. Ballou told him that he used to be a Baptist as well, but that now he was a Universalist and went on to tell of…