A Great Quote!

[Firefly]

Hi Gang, glad to be aboard and share with those of like-precious faith. Please take a moment and enjoy this great quote from the Universalist Quarterly.
A POSITIVE DOCTRINE: The New Testament universally asserts Christianity to be a positive doctrine. Its entrance into the world, at the birth of our Saviour, was announced as 'good tidings of great joy, which shall be unto all people.' When Jesus Christ began the public work of his mission, he entered upon it as 'the lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world,' – not of a part only; as 'the Saviour of the world;' as the 'light of the world;' as 'the bread of God, which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life to the world.' Such was the universal relation which he claimed, and in which he professed to act. During the short period of his personal ministry, his instructions were ordinarily directed, of course, to the more immediate and pressing concerns of his incipient kingdom, rather than to the expansion of its distant and ultimate results. It was necessary to explain its character, to illustrate, above all things, its origin in the universal love of God, to set that spirit forth as the vital energy and all-pervading principle of his religion, to enforce its bearing on the hearts and conduct of the people; in a word, to introduce the leaven, and set it at work. The circumstances of that juncture also required, that he should often apprize his disciples of the scenes through which they were to pass, and especially that he should thoroughly forewarn them of the amazing overturns that would mark the early stages in the progress of his cause, among their own countrymen. The old state of things, in their world, was about to be broken up, by a tremendous convulsion, in which Judaism, civil and religious, would be swept from the earth, and the kingdom of God established in its place. In foretelling the terrible judgments which thus hung over the unsuspecting people, he generally employed the hyperbolical style of the ancient prophets, and introduced the magnificent Jewish imagery; an imagery, so unfamiliar to us, so strange to the western nations even in those times, that it has been commonly misinterpreted as denoting endless woe in the future state of existence, although Christ himself took the greatest care to confine his reference to the present world, and even to his own age. These, and other subjects of immediate urgency, were the topics on which he usually dwelt. But whenever occasion suggested a reference to the ultimate consummation of his gospel, he represented it as a leaven that must leaven the whole mass. 'And I,' said he, 'if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.' Universalist Quarterly 1844.