August 31, 1899
HE who leans upon the crowd for support, is likely to find himself sooner or later underneath its feet.
NO PERSON can be a follower of the Lord and a follower of the crowd at the same time.
A TRULY Christian government must be one which rules by love and not by force; but if any civil government now upon the earth should attempt to proceed upon this principle of love, it could not carry on its functions a single day. When it is possible for a truly Christian government to be set up on the earth, God will set it up, and all efforts of men to make such a government out of any of the existing governments must utterly fail.
AMS THE Bible is spiritual, and as spiritual truth must be spiritually discerned (1 Corinthians 2:14), it follows that without a spiritual agency the Bible cannot even be understood by the people, much less enforced upon them as “the supreme law” of the land. And as no civil government has a spiritual agency at its command, it is only supreme folly for it to concern itself with the enforcement of biblical rules of life.
NO MAN can be a citizen of two countries at the same time, he cannot give allegiance at one time to two different governments. A man cannot be a subject of Great Britain while he is the subject of the United States, or of Germany, etc. But as the difference between two governments of earth is far less than the difference between any earthly government and the government of heaven, much less can any person be at once a citizen of earth and a citizen of heaven. Christ’s kingdom is “not of this world.”
IT is not the power of the civil government that hinders the advance of the cause of righteousness in the earth, but the power of unbelief in the human heart. Overcome all the power of the government—put an acknowledgement of God in its constitution, frame all its legislation in harmony with the strictest rules of right—and unbelief would still bar the way of the cause of Christ. But overcome this unbelief, and all the governments on earth, whatever their laws, could not hinder that cause for a moment. The attack of the forces of Christianity upon unrighteousness must be directed at the enemy that is intrenched in the heart.