Christian nation

“ The religious minded among our people feel that in the territory committed to us there is a high and solemn trust, a national trust. We are taught that in some sense the world itself is a field, and every Christian nation acknowledges a certain responsibility for the moral condition of the globe. But [Pg 211] how much nearer does it come when it is one's own country! And the church of America is coming to feel more and more that God gave us this country not merely for material aggrandizement, but for a glorious triumph of the church of Christ. ”

“ I want to know where the Christian nation is that does this—that will take their lawful captive that may have some other religion, and set him free from servitude, and give him time to wash and clothe himself, and think, and investigate, when both body and mind are enjoying their full power, and if they embrace their religion, then permit them to become citizens. ”

“ And because freedom and holiness and democracy are the ideals for which every Christian nation ought to strive—​and this the nations know, in their secret hearts, as well as you and I know it, dear Schoolmate—​because their ideals and ours are really the same, we have, in those ideals, the basis and groundwork, and starting point for an international brotherhood of nations ”

“ And that the nations of those which are saved and redeemed to God by the blood of Christ, out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation, will be made kings and priests unto God, to reign forever on the earth. ”

“ It is simply a nucleus of light, of intelligence, of truth, of virtue, of correct principles, of the holy Priesthood, of the revelations of God, and of something that has got to spread and to grow, increase and expand until it becomes a great nation and fills the whole earth ”

“ The spectacle of a nation powerful and enlightened, but without Christian faith, has been presented, almost within our own day, as a warning beacon for the nations.
On the other hand, the cultivation of the religious sentiment represses licentiousness, incites to general benevolence and the practical acknowledgment of the brotherhood of man, inspires respect for law and order, and gives strength to the whole social fabric, at the same time that it conducts the human soul upward to the Author of its being. ”

“ But let us look the facts solemnly in the face that the Christian religion has now been in effect for nearly two thousand years; that the nations now warring are Christian nations, in the very foremost rank of Christendom; that never in history has there been so much bloodshed in such wide-spread areas and so much hate, and that we see no signs that Christianity is employing any influence that she has not been employing for nearly two thousand years. ”

“ The end of Christian work is to spread the saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. This needs human activities, directed with strategic wisdom and sanctified energy. Each nation has its peculiar work: England to send forth Christian and civilizing agencies through her widely scattered colonies; America to Christianize the peoples from other lands who come to her shores; and to send back, through them, the Gospel of Christian civilization to their benighted countrymen. ”

“ These different races of Europe and the United States, constituting the body of the most civilized nations of the world, united in an intelligent appreciation of the divine character of the church, with their varied capacities and the great agencies at their disposal, would be the providential means of rapidly spreading the light of faith over the whole world, and of constituting a more Christian state of society. ”

“ Now if men were to engage in religion as in politics, commerce, arts; if the absolute religion, the Christianity of Christ, were applied to life with all the might of this age, as the Christianity of the church was then applied, what a result should we not behold! We should build up a great state with unity in the nation, and freedom in the people ”

“ Let us seek that every nation may experience, as we do, the blessings of religion, of peace, of a humble submission to a good government. Let us give them the Bible, which is, I may say, the corner-stone of all that we can boast as a nation; and then they may be as wise, as happy, as pious, as useful, as we are. O let the cries and tears of the heathen, let their wants and misery, let their ignorance and sin, come up before you! ”

“ The triumphant assertion of the spiritual significance of nationality in the latter part of the nineteenth century has made it further apparent that the forces working for religion, and especially for its Protestant forms, were stronger than the forces in opposition. The nation enters the arena of the controversy as a spiritual force, assuming as a first principle the existence of God and His supernatural government of the world. ”

“ All countries have some apathetic people who are frightened of being drawn into public life; but let us thank God that all countries have some people of high ideals, true patriotism and sound sense—people who, having adopted the religion of Christ in its various forms, remember the Tenth Chapter of St. Luke, and feel they can’t pass on as the Priest and Levite did, for they feel that those that lie stripped and wounded are their concern. Those are the people who will save Christian civilisation as we know it, not the civilisation we see, but as it might be. ”

“ But you, the rejected of nations, yourself reject all nations and forbid your sacraments to those who are not bom of your household. You are the Chosen People, whose religion is the nation and whose nationhood is religion. ”

“ When a king or noble visited some church, it was held that the visitor paid a high compliment to the clergy if he freed a slave or a captive before their altar. The national character of the Church deeply affected the life of the State. Its unity in a large measure gave unity to the people, and created the nation. ”

“ All nations shall flow into it; having liberty of access, they shall improve their liberty, and multitudes shall embrace the Christian faith. They shall flow into it, as streams of water, which denotes the abundance of converts that the gospel should make and their speed and cheerfulness in coming into the church. ”

“ Do we habitually remember how it offends our Lord to see divisions in the Christian Church, nations nominally Christian armed to the teeth against one another, class against class and individual against individual in fierce and relentless competition, jealousies among clergy and church-workers, communicants who forget that the sacrament of union with Christ is the sacrament of union also with their fellow-men?
Christians are to be makers of Christ’s peace. Something we can all do to reconcile individuals, families, classes, churches, nations. ”

“ They constitute a nation—not a republic, but a kingdom—so we read: “Unto him that loveth us, and loosed us from our sins by his blood; and he made us to be a kingdom, to be priests unto his God and Father; to him be the glory and the dominion for ever and ever” (Rev. 1:6, 7) . “And madest them to be unto our God a kingdom and priests” (Rev. 5:10) .
A nation or kingdom of priests is equal to a nation or kingdom without priests. And so the whole Church of God is his lot, heritage, “clergy,” or priesthood. As a kingdom, not of this world, though in the world. ”

“ Let us trace our prosperity to its true cause. 3. That national ruin will be the result, if we reject “the wisdom and knowledge” God has vouchsafed to us. 4. That every one who seeks for himself the “wisdom and knowledge” of the Bible is a patriot. He adds, in his own personal religion, to the stability and wealth of the nation. 5. That true patriotism will lead us to value and support those institutions which exist for the diffusion of the Gospel in our own and other lands.—John Johnson, M.A.: Sermons, vol. ”

“ After having seen the inutility and even danger of the perfections, virtues, and duties proposed by the Christian religion, let us enquire whether its political influences be more happy, and whether it can in reality promote the welfare of nations among whom it is established and faithfully observed. We at once find, that wherever this religion is admitted, two opposite legislations, ever at variance with each other, establish themselves. ”

“ But the Christian spirit of his government is evinced by that lofty idea which filled up the whole of his active life—by his conception of the relations of church and state, and of the utility of science for the civilization of nations—by his project of an universal empire destined to embrace and protect all civilized nations—the noble fabric of modern Christendom, of which he laid the first foundation-stone, and which reveals his enlarged views, comprehending alike his own age and succeeding times. ”

“ The time had at length arrived, when, far from the jarring scenes of Europe's strife, a nation was to come into existence, earnest in its love of human liberty, and vigorous in the execution of its purposes—a nation, which should accomplish some of the mightiest achievements of the human race; and where, under the benign influences of its political institutions, and in the Lord's due time, the gospel should be again revealed and the Kingdom of God set up among the children of men. ”

“ They are one nation, collected under one head, agreeing in the same manners and customs, and governed by the same laws; and they are a holy nation, because consecrated and devoted to God, renewed and sanctified by his Holy Spirit. [4.] It is the honour of the servants of Christ that they are God's peculiar people. They are the people of his acquisition, choice, care, and delight. ”

“ We have narrowed the Kingdom of Christ, we have claimed too little for Him, we have forgotten that He has to do with the secular as well as with the spiritual, that He must be King of the Nation as well as of the Church. But now in the growing {214} prominence of Social Questions, which so many fear as an evidence of the waning of religion, have we not an incentive to show that the social must be pervaded by the religious, that our duties to one another are no small part of the Kingdom of Christ? ”

“ The Churches of the different countries adopted the standpoint of those countries which governed them. What is the consequence if a Christian Church adopts the standpoint of a worldly Government as the true one? ”

“ If the kings of the earth and all their subjects, if all princes and judges of the earth, if young men and maidens, old and young, every age, and both sexes; if they whom the Baptist addressed, the publicans and the soldiers, were all together to hearken to and observe the precepts of the Christian religion regarding a just and virtuous life, then should the republic adorn the whole earth with its own felicity, and attain in life everlasting to the pinnacle of kingly glory. ”

“ Though we may profess different creeds and worship in different manners and places, we respect each other’s humanity and expression of faith. People with diverse views can practice their faiths here while living together in peace and harmony, carrying on our Nation’s noble tradition of religious freedom. ”

“ If the nations of the world were each to possess a national religion in the sense of the whole nation being religious, then, every individual would be chaste and temperate, upright and truthful, fortified by the strength and softened and adorned by the beauties of holiness. ”

“ Moreover, the Bible recognizes the importance of national relations in the position it assigns to nations in the historic and prophetic development of the plan for man's redemption. Before the advent of our Saviour, God was in covenant with a nation. ”

“ In the new time to come, let all this be forgotten, and the nations use all their national life to the full, and confidently await the result. Nothing to my mind can withstand the influence of our Christian religion when it is presented as the religion of Christ Himself ”

“ And what must the world think of the religion of a nation that consecrates churches, ordains ministers of the gospel, and sends abroad missionaries of the cross, while, in the mean time, it encourages and upholds a vice which is daily inflicting misery and death upon more than four millions of heathen? ”

“ Whatever is in its nature inimical to democracy cannot permanently endure on this continent, and certainly cannot control, whether it be in the sphere of ecclesiasticism or commercialism. This, then, is the sure ground for optimism. Religion is a necessity in a nation. What shall the type of religion be in America? ”

“ Thus they should be both a kingdom, having God for their governor; and a nation, a multitude of peoples connected together; not a scattered, disordered, and disorganized people, but a royal nation, using their own rites, living under their own laws, subject in religious matters only to God, and in things civil, to every ordinance of man for God's sake. ”

“ Then God's judgments shall be fully poured out, and anti-Christian world-power be finally overthrown to make room for the Kingdom of Christ, whom the Father has invested with all power and dominion and glory, " that all nations and languages should serve Him." ”

“ The nation, often confusedly and with stammering accents, but still on the whole consistently, has borne the same witness as the Church, that as God is living and reigning there must be a law, the expression of his will, at the foundation of all human society, which priests, kings, rulers, people must discover, acknowledge, obey. ”