| Hosea Ballou | |
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| Born | April 30, 1771 Richmond, New Hampshire, U.S. |
| Died | June 6, 1852 (aged 81) Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Religious beliefs | Universalist |
Hosea Ballou (April 30, 1771 – June 7, 1852) was an American Universalist clergyman and theological writer.
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Hosea Ballou was born in Richmond, New Hampshire, to a family of Huguenot origin. The son of Maturin Ballou, a Baptist minister, he was self-educated, and devoted himself early on to the ministry. In 1789 he converted to Universalism, and in 1794 became a pastor of a congregation in Dana, Massachusetts. Ballou was also a high-ranking freemason, and he attained the position of Junior Grand Warden of the Grand Lodge of New Hampshire in 1811.[1]
He preached at Barnard, Vermont and surrounding towns in 1801—1807; at Portsmouth, New Hampshire in 1807—1815; at Salem, Massachusetts in 1815—1817; and as pastor of the Second Universalist Church in Boston from December 1817 until his death there.
He founded and edited The Universalist Magazine (1819 -- later called The Trumpet), and The Universalist Expositor (1831 -- later The Universalist Quarterly Review), and wrote about 10,000 sermons as well as many hymns, essays and polemic theological works. He is best known for Notes on the Parables (1804), A Treatise on Atonement (1805) and Examination of the Doctrine of a Future Retribution (1834). These works mark him as the principal American expositor of Universalism.
Ballou has been called the "father of American Universalism," along with John Murray, who founded the first Universalist church in America. Ballou, sometimes called an "Ultra Universalist," differed from Murray in that he divested Universalism of every trace of Calvinism, and opposed legalism and trinitarian views. As he wrote, "Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit."
Ballou also preached that those forms of Chistianity that emphasized God as wrathful in turn hardened the hearts of their believers:
"It is well known, and will be acknowledged by every candid person, that the human heart is capable of becoming soft, or hard; kind, or unkind; merciful or unmerciful, by education and habit. On this principle we contend, that the infernal torments, which false religion has placed in the future world, and which ministers have, with an overflowing zeal, so constantly held up to the people, and urged with all their learning and eloquence, have tended so to harden the hearts of the professors of this religion, that they have exercised, toward their fellow creatures, a spirit of enmity, which but too well corresponds with the relentless cruelty of their doctrine, and the wrath which they have imagined to exist in our heavenly Father. By having such an example constantly before their eyes, they have become so transformed into its image, that, whenever they have had the power, they have actually executed a vengeance on men and women, which evinced that the cruelty of their doctrine had overcome the native kindness and compassion of the human heart."[2]
"Ballou,
Hosea". Encyclopædia
Britannica (11th ed.). 1911.
HOSEA BALLOU (1771-1852), American Universalist clergyman, was born in Richmond, New Hampshire, on the 30th of April 1771. He was a son of Maturin Ballou, a Baptist minister, was self-educated, early devoted himself to the ministry, became a convert to Universalism in 1789, and in 1794 became a pastor of a congregation at Dana, Massachusetts. He preached at Barnard, Vermont, and the surrounding towns in 1801-1807; at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1807-1815; at Salem, Massachusetts, in 1815-1817; and as pastor of the Second Universalist Church in Boston from December 1817 until his death there on the 7th of June 1852. He founded and edited The Universalist Magazine (1819; later called The Trumpet) and The Universalist Expositor (1831; later The Universalist Quarterly Review); wrote about io,000 sermons, many hymns, essays and polemic theological works; and is best known for Notes on the Parables (1804), A Treatise on Atonement (1805) and Examination of the Doctrine of a Future Retribution (1834); in these, especially the second, he showed himself the principal American expositor of Universalism. His great contribution to his Church was the body of denominational literature he left. From the theology of John Murray, who like Ballou has been called "the father of American Universalism," he differed in that he divested Universalism of every trace of Calvinism and opposed legalism and trinitarian views.
Consult the biography by Thomas Whittemore (4 vols., Boston,. 1854-1855) and that by Oscar F. Safford (Boston, 1889); and J. C. Adams, Hosea Ballou and the Gospel Renaissance (Boston, 1904).
His grand-nephew, Hosea Ballou (1796-1861), born in Halifax, Vermont, on the 18th of October 1796, preached _to Universalists in Stafford, Connecticut (1815-1821); and in Massachusetts, in Roxbury (1821-1838) and in Medford (1838-1853); and in 1853 was elected first president of Tufts College at Medford, serving in that office until shortly before his death, which took place at Somerville, Massachusetts, on the 27th of May 1861. He was the first (1847) to urge the necessity of a Universalist denominational college, and this did much towards the establishment of Tufts. He was associated with the elder Hosea Ballou in editing The Universalist Quarterly Review; edited an edition of Sismondi's History of the Crusades (1833); and wrote the Ancient History of Universalism, down to A.D. 553 (1829; 2nd ed., 1842).
MATURIN MURRAY BALLOU (1820-1895), son of the first Hosea, was a pioneer in American illustrated journalism, edited Gleason's Pictorial and Ballou's Monthly and many collections of quotations, and in 1872 became editor-in-chief of the Boston Daily Globe, of which he was one of the founders. He wrote a life of his father (1860), and a History of Cuba (1854).
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