THE GOSPEL OF FORCE

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 30, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 18.

THE GOSPEL OF FORCE.

IN the Gospel of Jesus Christ there is freedom and the equality and brotherhood of man. It is not so with the “gospel of force.” Each is the antipode of the other in conception, in purpose, in the process by which it accomplishes its object, and in the object itself when the thing has been worked out. Jesus said, “If any man hear My words and believe not, I judge him not; for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.” But the “gospel of force” judges, condemns, and executes. The Gospel of Jesus Christ teaches, invites, convinces, and wins men, in order that eternal life may be bestowed upon them. The “gospel of force” beats down, compels, drives, brow-beats, and even kills some, in order that its eminence may be recognized by those who remain, its greatness be acknowledged by men, even at the expense of the lives of some of the men. And that has been done even in our own day. It will be done in the future more than it is to-day; for the “gospel of force” and government without the consent of the governed (that is, government by force) are the “right and left hand supporters” of that phase of progress which dominates the so-called Christian nations of to-day.

IN the imperial nations which call themselves Christian this dogma of force is the chief tenet in the creed of national progress; and in the republics which also call themselves Christian there is a continued and growing aping of that imperial program. It is not confined to one empire nor to one republic; and the principle is the same wherever found. Even men recognized as Christian leaders have approved of war upon heathen countries by “Christian” countries as a precursor of missionary work among the people of the conquered country. The cruel and unchristian injustice of such a program seems never to have dawned upon such teachers. Christ has never authorized the use of the sword in opening a way to the hearts of the people. The idea of going to the heathen with “the sword in one hand and the Bible in the other” is a pagan idea, even tho proposed by one calling himself Christian. In the pagan mind religion and the sword are closely associated, and it is not an uncommon thing for one heathen nation to conquer another, and force the conquered nation to worship the gods of the conquerors. The “gospel of force,” the “gospel of powder and ball,” the gospel of “the sword in one hand and the Bible in the other,” is based upon the same idea. The principle of the Christian religion is, “Choose ye this day whom ye will serve.” It is a matter of free choice. The principle underlying that false system, that system of force in religious things, is choose the religion we bring or feel the fury of the sword.

BETWEEN that latter principle and the underlying principle of the Gospel of Christ there is a great gulf fixed which no man can bridge. On the one side of that gulf is the throne of everlasting love; on the other is the

throne of the arbitrary despot, on which sits Lucifer, the fallen light-bearer. His church is the church of force; his ministers the mailed warriors who carry “the Bible in one hand” and the implements of death and destruction in the other. But God, who has warned men against an unequal yoking with unbelief, has never yoked Himself with the proponents of any such cruel and ghastly policy. He who said, “I am come that they might have life,” never spoke of the human slaughter-weapon of oppression but to condemn its use. We have entered upon times, however, when armies of subjugation go out with the benediction of religious leaders upon them, exponents of the “gospel of force.” A “Christian” emperor, whose imperial palace is pictured on the preceding page, in sending forth his general to a “heathen” land declared to him that he must “smite with the mailed fist.” That is the fist that mangles and bruises; and it was such a “fist” that fell upon the Chinese, reddening their rivers with the blood of their slain, beating down their women into dishonor, and lighting their skies with their burning homes. But in the Gospel of Jesus Christ the fist becomes an open hand, not smiting, but giving out benefits; not bruising, but binding up whatever bruising has been done; not wielding the sword, but healing the wound the sword has made. That is the business of the true Christian. He has no fist—his hand is always open to the needs and sorrows of others.

THE “gospel of force” not only carries sorrow, misery, and death with it; but is a continual misrepresentation of the cause of Christ in the earth. He who, under the name of Christian, conducts such a campaign or takes part therein, holds the name of Christ and the Gospel of Christ up to the derision and hatred of the heathen world, and compels Christ and His cause to bear cruel and unjust reproach. There is no greater enemy of Christ and His cause than he, who, professing to be Christ’s representative, pursues a policy of injustice, force, cruelty, and oppression toward those who have not known Him. Force and Christianity, imperialism and the kingdom of Christ, are as far apart as the east and the west, as midnight and noonday, as death and life. Church and State united have given us imperial Christianity. We find it in Russia; we find it in Germany, in Norway and Sweden, in England and Turkey. We found it in the conquests of the Moors; we found it in the Dark Ages; and we are finding it in America to-day, creeping in insidiously in the imitation of the ways of other nations. Claiming to be a Christian nation, but abandoning the principles of her national charter, she has taken part in the “gospel of force,” and is busily hedging up the way to the hearts of a heathen people.

THERE is a better way; there is a purer, kinder Gospel; there is a King who never does nor will oppress. That way is the way He trod with bleeding feet; that Gospel is the Gospel of love and brotherhood; and that King is the Maker of the heavens and the earth, the Prince of Peace, the everlasting Father, whose home is the habitation of love, whose throne is set in the hearts of those who are His. Into His service oppression never comes, and out of His hand go none of the carnal arrows that wound the hearts of men. Let us enlist in that service of love; let us preach that Gospel of peace; and triumph in that victory that uproots all things that bruise, and oppress, and misrepresent the mission of our Father in the earth.