THE idea that Christians should not engage in politics is to some good people quite horrifying. What! the best people in the land withdraw and let the country’s politics be run by the very worst! Dreadful! What would become of the government! etc. The thought brings up in their minds pictures of anarchy, barbarism, and governmental chaos.
But, good friends, the truth is the government would not be affected at all by the withdrawal of Christians from politics; for the simple reason that real Christians in this country—or in any country—are too scarce to make any impression, politically, upon the government. Real Christian people have not been running the government at all; it is the bad people who have been running it all the time. Anybody who denies this must be prepared to prove that Christians in this country are in the majority, in defiance of all statistics and the commonest facts of observation.
THE important question is not, Shall there be an extension of American territory? but shall there be an extension of American principles of government? An extension of the former by conquest means a fearful narrowing of the latter.