Christians and Civil Government.
By Editor
A local paper east of the Rockies from which we expected better things, has the following in reply to a critic on a Christian's right to vote:— "Is it right for a Christian to vote? One critic evidently believes not. Now if all Christians should refrain from voting, in whose hands would be the reins of government? Manifestly in the hands of the enemies of Christianity. Is that the design of God? We think not." Now this is the very argument of National Reformers and Roman Catholics. Miss Willard's statement that the kingdom of Christ should enter this world through the gateway of politics is the logical result of such reasoning. Every human government that ever existed has been the enemy of Christianity the very moment it entered the sphere of Christianity or morals. And no class of people has ever done more to make civil government an enemy to Christianity than have professed Christians who wished to put and to keep "good men" in office. There are none under greater temptation in this respect than Christians the moment they enter politics. It is the old Babylonian cry over again: "Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. . . . And the Lord said, . . . Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language. . . . So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth." Oh, that man could and would learn that the kingdom and reign of Christ come not by policy or expediency, but in the hearts of men through his gospel; and in the realm of earth, "the zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this." The only proper civil government is the one absolutely non-religious, and the less that Christians have to do with it as Christians the better.