MINISTERS of the gospel are ordained to be ambassadors for God—agencies through which the Holy Spirit may appeal to sinful hearts to accept God’s offer of free grace and become reconciled to him. But according to the conceptions which many ministers seem to have in these days, the divine plan of which they are the exponents, is an arrangement in which grace and the Holy Spirit connect through themselves with city politics and the policeman’s club. Such an incongruous combination is utterly foreign to the purposes of heaven. Civil government is ordained of God; but civil government and the gospel of Christ are two very different things. The power of the civil arm is one thing; the power of the gospel of salvation through faith is another thing altogether.