Missionary Rights, Church and State, and the Kingdom
A MISSIONARY who stands habitually on his rights is about useless as a spiritual power. What the churches need to have impressed on them to-day is that church and state are different instrumentalities, working toward different ends, and that the extension of political influence and of commercial relations has no necessary relation to the advance of the kingdom of God. At the very best, these agencies are only the wheels on which the gospel advances; they are not the power itself. If the kingdom of God is to advance in the earth, it must be by the labors of men who are absolutely intent on spiritual ends, who are willing to sacrifice their rights and pleasures and life itself for the sake of winning men to Christ.—The Watchman.