August 24, 1899
CONFEDERATION represents the highest power of man, but it never represents the power of God.
THE devil never engineers one of his worst deceptions without first transforming himself into an angel of light.
THE greatest deception of the age is that which leads Christians to look through the gateway of politics for the coming of the kingdom of Christ.
EVERY effort of the civil authority to settle a religious controversy, only makes the controversy rage more fiercely.
THE declaration made by Jesus Christ before Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world,” is equivalent to a declaration that he is not in politics.
CIVIL government cannot concern itself with sin without forming a union of church and state; for under any union of church and state, all that the government undertook to do was to punish sin and repress heresy. Moral grounds, therefore, cannot be considered by civil government in determining what acts shall be prohibited; for if immorality is a sufficient cause for prohibition in one case, it is in all cases, and the government would be logically bound to prohibit everything immoral, which would simply amount to a prohibition of sin. When the civil authority gets off on this path it will only entangle itself in hopeless difficulties. The true question and the only question for the civil authority is that of preserving rights. Whatever invades the natural rights of the individual citizen, is a proper subject for prohibitive legislation.
IN true republican government, all individual citizens are represented but not any institutions of individuals. Therefore only individuals—only “we, the people”—can rightfully go into politics. When a trust or a church goes into politics, and influences elections and legislation, something is represented in the government which has no just claim to representation there, and the government is no longer truly republican.