WILL THE PEOPLE BE ADMONISHED.
By G.
REFERRING to the new United Christian party and its proposition to place none but Christians into political office, a New York exchange says:— "There are Christians who know very little about the business of running civil government, and non-Christians who are well qualified in this respect. The only result of the success of this 'United Christian' political scheme would be that politicians would have forced upon them a strong inducement to profess Christianity and stand well with the church. Hypocrisy would flourish, and the church would be more and more leavened with the spirit of worldliness. The ideal state of the church is that described in the book of Acts [chapter 5:1-14], where the hypocritical class were all afraid to join the church, having the fate of Ananias before their eyes, and only the sincere believers were added to it, and these in great numbers." There is another fact in this connection that should be emphasized, and that is, there is no mention of these "sincere believers" seeking office, or in any way manifesting a disposition to control civil affairs. Therefore there was no inducement for men to join the church for political purposes. It was not until after the apostles and their contemporaries had passed away, that the "mystery of iniquity" (2 Thess. 2:7) gained sufficient foothold to aspire to anything like a Christian political party. And when such a condition became predominant in the church, and she was able to wield, and showed the disposition to wield, a powerful political influence, even the emperor (Constantine) and the senate deemed it expedient to profess Christianity in behalf of the whole people. This was certainly a "United Christian party," as far as politics could possibly pose as Christianity, but it was far from being a party of9united Christians. This was so clearly demonstrated by the consequent and logical descent into the Dark Ages that it is surprising to see professed Christians deliberately taking a step which, if successful, must inevitably produce a like result. With all the boasted enlightenment of the nineteenth century, it is just as impossible to nurture the "mystery of iniquity" (Church-and-State union) to-day without corrupting both as it was in those earlier days. A man can no more drink intoxicating liquors to-day without getting drunk than he could in any other age of the world. Neither can a nation drink the wine of a corrupt, place-seeking church without becoming drunken (Rev. 18: 1-4), and therefore unfitted for its legitimate sphere. Will the people of the United States be admonished by the history of the past and the prophecy of the future? or will they go blindly on, regardless of the things which Inspiration has "written for our learning"?