IF the church had never gone into politics, religious persecution would never have been a political proceeding.
HUMAN nature moves a person to nothing more readily than to a usurpation of prerogatives which belong to no human power.
JESUS CHRIST, as he is to-day, is the divine standard of manhood. In the school of Christ, and that only, can that standard be attained.
“I DETERMINED,” said the Apostle Paul to certain of his converts, “to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified.” Not much politics or war would be preached by ministers to-day if they were like Paul.
WHEN the church leads the state, there is a fulfillment of the proverb of the blind leading the blind into the ditch. In such a case the church is blind to her true calling or she would never want to lead the state; and the state is blind to its proper mission on earth or it would not allow the church to be its leader.
MEN do not pay very much attention these days to the word of the Lord, except to pass criticisms upon it; but there is a time coming when their most earnest attention will be given it unasked. That time will be the day which will unmask its power over physical things. A great nation, with its power expressed in the ponderous guns of its battleships, is the most conspicuous thing before men’s eyes to-day; but the day cometh—and cometh soon—when “the Lord also shall roar out of Zion and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth shall shake: but the Lord will be the hope of his people.” Joel 3:16. God’s Word is the most powerful thing in the earth to-day, and as such should receive the most earnest attention of mankind, for whose salvation it is now employed.
ROMAN CATHOLIC writers are in the habit of designating Protestantism as a mere negation; and some even of those who call themselves Protestants are inclined to consider Protestantism as being faulty in this respect. But such have only the most superficial view of what Protestantism is; so superficial, in fact, as to be altogether erroneous. Protestantism is truth, and truth is always first; error comes afterward and denies the truth, and then the truth also denies the error; but error is the negation, in the truest sense. Protestantism denies papal doctrines just as all truth denies error; but it is no less positive than as though there were no error for it to contravene.
LET your Christianity recommend your creed.