Rev. HOPE BAIN was a Scotchman by birth, from Aberdeen. His father, once an officer in the British navy, removed with his family to Maryland, and died in Baltimore in 1812. The son served during the war of 1812, young as he was (fifteen), as a member of a Baltimore company of volunteers attached to the 5th regiment, and was in the battles of Bladensburg and West Point. He was at first a Presbyterian, and member of that church for many years. In 1830 he was appointed an agent to labor in West Tennessee, and in the valley of the Mississippi, for the American Sunday-School Union. He became a Universalist in 1847, and was ordained a preacher at Norfolk, Va., in 1848. He was for fifteen years a teacher in Virginia. He moved to North Carolina, in December, 1851, and preached, before the war of the Rebellion, in twenty-six counties, and, after the war, in six other counties. His last sermon was in Goldsboro, in 1875. Anticipating his approaching departure, he said that at the age of eighty-one he could not expect to remain here much longer, nor did he desire to. He was nearing a home where he should be united to loved ones gone before. He was widely known in North Carolina. He was a Union man in the strictest sense, thoroughly loyal to the government during the late war, which alienated from him many of his former associates and hearers, but he never wavered in devotion to his country, and to the cause of the Christian Gospel. Although without pecuniary resources, he continued to preach wherever there was an opening, and with little or no remuneration labored faithfully and steadfastly in the ministry as long as health and strength lasted. His faith uplifted and sustained him as he passed from these earthly scenes.
Rev. WOODBURY M. FERNALD was for several years a prominent preacher with the Universalists. He was born in Portsmouth, N. H., March 21, 1813, and died in Boston, Mass., Dec. 10, 1873. He was ordained at Portsmouth, N. H., in 1836. In 1838 he was pastor at Cabotville (now Chicopee), Mass. In 1840 and 1841 he was located at Newburyport, and while there published a volume entitled "Universalism against Partialism," an able statement of the contrast set forth. He was next in Stoneham as pastor for three years. In 1854 he removed to Boston, and becoming interested in the works of Swedenborg and the writings of Andrew Jackson Davis, he was after a while ordained as a Swedenborgian minister. He was so fascinated by the New Church doctrines as to become alienated from his former associates and lost to their ministry. He published, in 1854, a "Compendium of the Theological and Spiritual Writings of Swedenborg," and in 1859, "God in His Providence," in which he implicitly renounced the notion of "the eternity of Hell," and put forth a Universalist view of human destiny, turning Swedenborg's principles against the Seer's own conclusions, and making those principles the ground of an assurance of Universal Restoration. He published afterwards other works, evincing much ability. His sincerity was never doubted.