to meet his Maker (or whatever destiny might await him) on the best of
terms.
Another testament of Whitman’s faith, deeply moving in its simple lan-
guage and imagery, is “Song of the Universal.” The much-revised poem
was composed in response to an invitation from students at the all-male
Tufts College to deliver a poem at the college’s 1874 commencement.
Because of his illness, Whitman could not attend the event; the poem
was read by another with unknown success. Although critics have de-
tected Hegelian and Brahminic in®uences in the poem,^35 Tufts College,
it should be observed, was founded by Universalists, and both the poem’s
title and its message may be construed as gracious nods to a Universalist
audience. Its proclamation of faith in the perseverance of the soul and the
steady and ultimate triumph of good over evil is congruent with the Uni-
versalist creed, which has historic af¤nities to Spiritualism. Universalism
has been de¤ned as “the doctrine that the destiny of mankind is to pro-
gress onward and upward forever; that always before man is a chance to
develop and that always in man is a power to unfold, always a time and a
place in which to grow and always in man a power to respond to the
opportunity.”^36 Such, generally, was Whitman’s faith. He declares in the
closing pages of Democratic Vistas that “our modern civilization, with all
its improvements” is doomed unless it “be confronted and met by at least
an equally subtle and tremendous force-infusion for purposes of spiritu-
alization, for the pure conscience, for genuine esthetics, and for abso-
lute and primal manliness and womanliness.”^37 The poet’s argument re-
sembles “the doctrine of salvation by character” of the Reverend Hosea
Ballou, a key ¤gure in the development of Universalism, who maintained
that sin is “not an inherited condition, that the human will is free and that
ultimately man will learn to conform to the will of God; that the death
of Christ was not to pay a debt to God, but to draw men away from sin;
that Christ was example and incorporation to lead men to the perfect life;
that man would suffer reasonable punishment for violation of all law, but
in the end would work in harmony with God.” And like Whitman’s im-
agery of the soul’s voyage toward divinity, article 5 of the (Universalist)
Winchester Profession of Faith proclaims “the ¤nal harmony of all souls
with God.”^38 Divested of their theological language, Ballou’s principles
harmonize with those articulated in Whitman’s postwar poems, one of
“Sweet, Peaceful, Welcome Death” / 223