The Christian law enjoins that we “follow peace with all men and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.” It is not enjoined that we follow peace with a political party, but “peace with all men,” and holiness. The Lord said, “Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called the children of God.” The angels of God shouted when Jesus was born, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and good will toward man.” Shall that religion enjoining its adherents to “follow peace with all men,” promising a blessing upon the peace-makers, whose divine Author was introduced into the world, with an angelic shout of “peace on earth,” be made an instrument in the hands of a misguided and worldly priesthood, in the political strifes of the world? If it shall, we betide him who does it. It will kill every preacher and every church that ever had the Spirit of God in them, to do it. Indeed, all of this description are now dead. Not a man nor a church among them, throughout the length and breadth of the country, is doing anything for the cause of God. Not a sinner is converted by them, nor a saint comforted. Many of them, old men, that formerly had the spirit of the Lord, preached Christ with great power, with their souls full of the love of God, converted sinners, edified and comforted the children of God, now sit in the company of worldlings, read and discuss politics on the Lord’s day, while the house of God is forsaken.
Our mission is to preach Christ, Christianity, and to disentangle it from all connection with these side-artifices, devised to draw men away from the Lord. We have only alluded to slavery, and the excitement about it, so far as to discover the proper course for a christian, but not to discuss its merits, as a system, at all. In doing this, we have simply applied to it the rule that we do to all questions of the kind, viz: To inquire for the course pursued by the Lord, the apostles, and the first Christians, and follow it as infallibly safe and right. In doing this, we have certainly shown that those warring upon us in this matter, have no commission from heaven, from Christ, or his apostles, or, in anything in all their lives and practice. We shall, therefore, as far as God shall enable us, preach the pure gospel of the grace of God, both North and South, East and West, to all, both great and small, high and low, rich and poor, bond and free; and thus labor to bring them into the kingdom that is not of this world—a kingdom that can not be moved—where the pure in heart can enjoy God, his Holy Spirit, and his people, though the wicked rule and the civil governments are corrupt, with the blessed assurance that they shall one day be delivered from all the perplexities of an imperfect and sinful state. Here we must all turn our attention at last.
Civil governments can never be perfected. They will always be working wrongs and cruelties some place. The wisdom and power of man can not avoid this. The wickedness and selfishness of men, also, are in the way, so that the civil institutions of the country can never be perfected; and he has studied Christianity to but little purpose, who thinks its aim to be the perfection of the human contrivances of the world. It looks above this, to the purification and perfection of individuals, in their regeneration and personal sanctification, and preparation for a better state. It does not, like some fleshly systems, look upon this world as man’s all; but, as momentary, a pilgrim state, not our home, not our continued city, but merely the preparatory state to a better world. How soon this world will all be nothing to all these political wranglers, who have suffered themselves to be made tools for political parties, to the neglect of the church of God, without one soul ever being able to see that all their noise, ever did any good in any way. How silly it is, as well as unchristian, for old friends, neighbors and brethren to disagree and fall out about the intricate and deceptive schemes of political wire-workers. Such men are doing no good for their church or country. The very circumstance of their falling out with their best friends, shows that they are insane upon the very subject upon which they propose to enlighten the world, and, of all men in the world, the most unsafe, to guide either church or state.
[UNPROFITABLE SERVANTS.]
LOOKING at the eternal benefits Christianity has conferred upon us, and the rich inheritance it proposes to confer in the world to come, the little a poor mortal can do in a short lifetime sinks into nothingness, and deserves not to be mentioned. When we think of him who became poor, that we through his poverty might be rich—that he became a little lower than the angels, that he, by the grace of God, should taste of death for every man—that he had not where to lay his head—that he died for us—think of the holy apostles and martyrs of Jesus, with all their labors and sufferings—all we do, or can do, dwindles into perfect insignificance. To God, over all, blessed for ever and ever, through Jesus Christ, we owe eternal gratitude, praises and thanksgiving that he has ever received us and permitted us to labor in his gracious cause at all. To his name be honor and power everlasting.