THE TRIBUNAL OF THE FUTURE.
DR. JESSE B. THOMAS discusses in the Homiletic Review, says the Voice, "a possible federation of all Protestant denominations into one working body, with one central form of government that shall respect the autonomy of each denomination, as our federal government respects the autonomy of the States." We will then have a national church which can so bring its influence to bear upon politicians that the Church will control the State, and church institutions, like the Sunday, will be enforced by civil law. Then it will be that the demand of the National Reformers, voiced by Rev. J. M. Foster, will be met:— But one danger lies in this: The church does not speak as a church. The American Sabbath Union has done a good work. The denominations have spoken. But the Christian organized church has not officially gone to Washington and spoken. The work there has been largely turned over to associations. But the voice of God, authoritative, official, is through his church. Should there not be joint action of the denominations in this? They should, it would appear, appoint a joint committee to speak for God, and properly and courageously done, with a plain recital of judgments which will follow upon refusing to hear, there can follow but the very best results. "These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy; and have power over waters to turn them into blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues." Rev. 11:6. Much is lost by the church failing officially to speak at the right time and in the right place. No association is clothed with this authority. They are individual and social; but the church is divine. She can and ought to utter the voice of God in the halls of Congress, and as an organized church. The Church Militant of November, a paper which believes that "the sphere of politics is the most important post of Christian duty," says:— As we see no signs of such repentance and reformation on the part of the denominations as is necessary to enable them to cope with these evils [intemperance, love of wealth, theater going, etc.], and as good men divided and scattered cannot effectively coöperate in work for needed reforms, we favor decided and speedy action towards the formation of the church of the future, and think its foundations should be laid as deep and broad as the truth of God and his eternal righteousness. In this way God will once more renew his church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Now all this (and we might quote much more) is enacting right over again what was enacted in the beginning of the great apostasy. The church outlined by Dr. Thomas is just such a church as Constantine made, modeled in its government after the State. The highest officers in this great and complicated church would be either officers in the State, or would have great influence in the State.227The church, combining for political ends (for this is one of the objects), would be consulted by the State on all so-called "moral" questions, and the Church would dictate such legislation and punish the legislator who dared refuse by killing him politically. We should then have the church and the "voice of God," which Mr. Foster demands, but it would be safer to say that it would be the voice of the same god which thundered out of the Vatican for the 1,260 years of the papal supremacy. That the men who are looking for a "renewal" of the church from this quarter are many of them honest we have no doubt, but they are blinded to the results which would certainly follow, and which have always followed union of Church and State, a confederacy without Christ. Such church or confederation would be "of the earth, earthy," and it would be moulded by worldly policy and run by worldly men. The results which would follow it would be spiritual death for all connected with it, and persecution of those who, urged on by the Spirit of Christ, exposed its iniquity.