ARE we, as disciples of Christ, citizens of a kingdom not of this world, a religious community, to be distracted, disconcerted, and thrown into confusion? or, are we drawn to a common center, by an attraction so heavenly, commanding, and binding, that no side-influence can divert us from our course? The Lord is about to test us, prove us, and show whether we are true, sincere, and men of integrity to the great principles which we profess, and have been inculcating, or will turn traitor to them, despise them, and trample them under our feet. We have been preaching union upon the Bible, and the Bible alone, to our neighbors; but, the time has come to test us practically, and compel us to apply our philosophy in an instance of the greatest moment, and best calculated, of all others, to show its power—its moral and spiritual efficacy among ourselves.
What course shall we take, then, during the coming campaign? Shall preachers of the gospel of Christ enter the pulpit, with exciting political news in their heads and hearts, and make Kansas-Nebraska, and anti-Kansas-Nebraska, Slavery and anti-Slavery speeches? Shall their themes be the Constitution, Liberty, Popular Sovereignty, North, South, Fillmore, Buchanan, Fremont, American, Democratic and Republican. Shall these be the themes that consecrate the house of God during the coming months, while thousands are perishing for the word of God, and dying in their sins? We say, and would if we had a voice louder than the seven thunders of the Apocalypse, and more immutable than the oath of the angel of God, standing with one foot upon the land, and the other upon the sea, say, no, by NO MEANS, for the following reasons:
First. Jesus and his apostles, in all their official acts, never attempted to correct the political institutions of the country, no matter how corrupt they were, but left them, and those who made them, to take care of their own responsibilities. We must follow their precedent, or we are not the disciples of Christ.
Second. Our Lord and his apostles, in all their official procedure, never made a decision, or gave even an opinion, upon the merits or demerits of any form of civil government, republican, monarchical, either limited or absolute. They left all these matters to take their course, and lifted their thoughts above them to a spiritual kingdom, that shall endure when time shall be no more. We must do as they did, or forfeit our claim to be one with them.
Third. The Lord and his apostles never made a decision, or gave an opinion, on any system of slavery, though slavery existed, in some form or other, in every country where they preached and wrote, in all their official career. We must humble ourselves to the same limits.
Fourth. We have the infallible directions of the Spirit of God, to believers, connected with slavery, both masters and servants, and these directions we must give, when we speak on the subject at all, or depart from the faith, because we are opposed to it. Every man who does not do this, manifestly repudiates the practice and teachings of the holy apostles.
Fifth. Jesus and his apostles did not found slavery of any kind, and neither our Lord nor his religion can be responsible for any system of slavery or its results, no matter how good or how bad. Slavery is an institution of the world, as all other political institutions are, and neither the kingdom of God nor its subjects are responsible for its results.
Sixth. Our Lord and his apostles never formed an issue between the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world. How utterly preposterous and absurd it is, to the mind of one who has noticed, that our Lord never made an issue between his kingdom, or his religion, and any civil government or kingdom of the world, to see some misguided creature trying to form a direct issue between the kingdom of God and whatever political institution he may chance to fall out with and trying to set the citizens in the kingdom of Christ in battle array with the citizens of the civil government! Such a man has no use for a church only as a kind of battering-ram to beat down some sinful institution that he has just perceived is to ruin the nation. He would have the kingdom of God a convenient engine, properly adjusted and poised, himself commander-in-chief, so that he can now bring it to bear upon Masons, then upon Odd Fellows, anon upon Sons of Temperance, then upon Slavery, or any other monster that may rise. But the man who stands upon an eminence lofty enough to discern the kingdom of God, beholds an institution with an aim transcendently higher than deciding upon the rights and wrongs of the political governments of the world, amending, correcting, and perfecting them; the superlatively noble, grand, and beneficent object of translating individuals, whether high or low, rich or poor, bond or free, whether their political institutions are good or bad, out of darkness into light, and out of the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of God, and in their few remaining days here, no matter what their earthly condition, prepare them for guests of the redeemed hosts who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb, in the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
Seventh. Christianity is the thing to be promoted, and not to be used as a mere instrumentality, by men who care nothing about it, and who are doing but little to advance it, to promote some object of their own worldly ambition. We must promote Christianity itself, and not employ it as a mere means to promote something else.