CHRISTIANITY NOT A "FLINTY HAMMER."
By W. N. Glenn
THE following comment of the Missionary Review, while apparently designed to show that Christianity should be a militant power to check crime by force, fully demonstrates that such is not its prerogative:— The savage dangerousness of Turkish Mohammedanism (Arabian and Indian standing considerably higher) can only be kept in check by the proximity of a watchful Christian power. Russia, by her very hardness and semi-barbarousness, as well as by her vast extent, seems best suited to this function. We may well recognize the hand of God, who doubtless knows his own mind, in choosing out a flinty hammer to pulverize a flinty rock. While it is contended that a Christian power only can keep the Turk in check, the argument admits that the more unchristian the checking power is, the more effectual it will be. It is a fact that God "knows his own mind," and it is a fact that the only weapon which he has placed in the hands of the Christian is the "sword of the Spirit, which is the sword of God." Eph. 6:17. "For tho we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh (for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds)." 2 Cor. 10:3, 4. The reason why our weapons are not carnal is because "we wrestle not against flesh and blood." The strongholds that we are to pull down are the strongholds of sin, the powers of darkness, the "spiritual wickedness in high places." Eph. 6:12. When God sends the Christian to war, it is that he may conquer by love and good works; when he would overthrow a wicked secular power by the sword, he sends the "flinty hammer" of secular power to do the work. Altho the implement of vengeance profess to be Christian, the fact that God sends it as an executioner is evidence that he does not deem it Christian. The admission that "Russia, by her very hardness and semi-barbarousness, . . . seems best suited to this function" against Turkey, is an admission that Christianity is not suited to such a work. A policeman set to watch a dangerous criminal must be prepared to resort to the use of carnal weapons, else his watching will soon lose its terror. To apply the term Christian to a hard, "semi-barbarous" power, one prepared for carnal warfare, and itself a cruel persecutor of Christians, is a confusion of terms. When the disciples of Christ wanted to call down fire from heaven on a certain village because its people would not receive him, he rebuked them, and said: "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." John 9:55, 56. So those professed Christians who urge the so-called Christian governments to "wipe the Turkish domain from the map of the world," know not what manner of spirit they are of. They certainly do not have the spirit of Christ in that particular demand. Christ sent his disciples to preach the Gospel, "beginning at Jerusalem," the very city that had rejected him and put him to death. Moreover, they were not to begin their work until they were "endued with power from on7high;" their power was not to come from any earthly source. And when Jerusalem inaugurated a wholesale persecution of the disciples, the Lord did not employ a Christian power to hold it in check by military force. No; the disciples fled, and preached the Gospel elsewhere, leaving the Lord to do the checking in his own time and in his own way. Then, when the Lord's time came to chastise the wicked city, he did not employ even a nominal Christian force to destroy it; he sent against it the power of Pagan Rome. There is nothing that so clearly indicates the apostasy of the professed Christian world of to-day as its clamor for secular power, in order to enforce its dictates and to take vengeance upon those who do not yield to its demands. It is not alone the pope of Rome who is scheming for temporal power, but nominal Protestantism is seeking a like carnal power with equal pertinacity. Nor do they seek temporal power merely to coerce the avowed enemies of Christ, in order that the meek principles of true Christian charity may prevail; but they aim to enforce upon Christians certain man-made dogmas of the nominal church, nowhere sanctioned in the word of God. Wherever they have the sanction of law and the public sentiment to back it, they are ready to join forces with the "dragon" to "make war" with those who "keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ."