Hosea Ballou (1771–1852) was an American theologian. He was the foremost exponent of the Universalist church for more than 50 years.
Born in Richmond, New Hampshire, Ballou received less than one year of formal education and was mostly self-educated. Baptized initially into a Baptist church, he was expelled because of his belief in universal salvation. In 1789, he began preaching that doctrine on a Calvinist foundation.
Ballou reevaluated Calvinism under the influence of philosopher Ethan Allen’s Reason the Only Oracle of Man (1784) and began preaching his version of Universalist theology, which he expounded in A Treatise on Atonement (1805.)
Stressing the use of reason in religious thinking, Ballou’s Universalism discarded the doctrines of original sin and vicarious atonement. From 1817, Ballou held that punishment for sin is limited to earthly life and that, at death, the soul gets purified by divine love and enters immortality.
From 1809 until his death, he served as a pastor—first in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, then in Salem, Massachusetts, and finally at the Second Universalist Church in Boston from 1817.
Ballou wrote some 10,000 sermons, 200 hymns, and numerous essays. His works include Notes on the Parables (1804) and A Series of Letters in Defense of Divine Revelation (1816,) correspondence with the evangelist Abner Kneeland. Ballou founded and edited The Universalist Magazine (1819) and The Universalist Expositor (1830.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Hosea Ballou
The greatest truths are the simplest.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Communication
As unkindness has no remedy at law, let its avoidance be with you a point of honor.
—Hosea Ballou
God’s glowing covenant.
—Hosea Ballou
If gratitude is due from children to their earthly parent, how much more is the gratitude of the great family of men due to our father in heaven.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Gratitude
Disease is the retribution of outraged Nature.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Nature
There is one inevitable criterion of judgment touching religious faith . .. Can you reduce it to practice? If not, have none of it.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Belief, Faith
Theories are always very thin and insubstantial, experience only is tangible.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Assumptions, Theory
Obedience, as it regards the social relations, the rules of society, and the laws of nature and nature’s God, should commence at the cradle and end only at the tomb.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Obedience
Doubt is the incentive to truth and inquiry leads the way.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Doubt
Obedience sums up our entire duty.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Obedience
Moderation is the key to lasting enjoyment.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Appreciation, Gratitude, Blessings, Moderation
A single bad habit will mar an otherwise faultless character, as an ink-drop soileth the pure white page.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Habits, Habit
It is but a step from companionship to slavery when one associates with vice.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Vice, Associates
Falsehood is cowardice, the truth courage.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Truth
Suspicion is far more apt to be wrong than right; oftener unjust than just. It is no friend to virtue, and always an enemy to happiness.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Doubt, Trust
Energy, even like the Biblical grain of mustard-seed, will move mountains.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Enthusiasm, Energy
Tears of joy are like the summer rain drops pierced by sunbeams.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Tears, Crying, Rain
Never let your zeal outrun your charity. The former is but human, the latter is divine.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Enthusiasm, Charity, Zeal
Hypocrisy is oftenest clothed in the garb of religion.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Hypocrisy, One liners
There is no possible excuse for a guarded lie.—Enthusiastic and impulsive people will sometimes falsify thoughtlessly, but equivocation is malice prepense.
—Hosea Ballou
The act of divine worship is the inestimable privilege of man, the only created being who bows in humility and adoration.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Praise
Education commences at the mother’s knee, and every word spoken in the hearing of little children tends toward the formation of character.—Let parents always bear this in mind.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Example, Education
Exaggeration is a blood relation to falsehood, and nearly as blameable.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Exaggeration
Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Happiness
Not the least misfortune in a prominent falsehood is the fact that tradition is apt to repeat it for truth.
—Hosea Ballou
Idleness is emptiness; the tree in which the sap is stagnant, remains fruitless.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Idleness
Weary the path that does not challenge. Doubt is an incentive to truth and patient inquiry leadeth the way.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Doubt
It is my humble prayer that I may be of some use in my day and generation.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Usefullness
The oppression of any people for opinion’s sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Oppression, Freedom
It is in sickness that we most feel the need of that sympathy which shows how much we are dependent upon one another for our comfort, and even necessities. Thus disease, opening our eyes to the realities of life, is an indirect blessing.
—Hosea Ballou
Topics: Sickness
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