But if the family of a Christian is assaulted, not by foreign enemies, but by wicked men in his own country, if he does not defend himself, he and his family will be robbed, tortured, and killed. This is an error, again. If all the members of a family were Christians, and gave up their lives to the service of others, not one man would despoil them or kill them. Mikluha Mackli settled among a most brutal tribe of savages and was not murdered by them; they learned to love him, and submitted to him, because he did not require anything of them, but did as much good to them as he could.
If a Christian has to live amidst relations and friends who are not Christians in the full sense of the word, who defend themselves and their property by violence, and who call upon him to take part in their violence, then is the time for him to fulfill the duty for which life was given to him. The knowledge of the truth is only given to a Christian in order that he should make it known to others, and especially to those he is more closely connected with, and to whom he is bound by ties of relationship or friendship; and the Christian can testify to the truth in no other way than by avoiding the errors into which others have fallen, and refusing to take part either in the violence of the aggressors or of those who resist them, by giving all up to others, and by showing that his only desire is to fulfill the will of God and that he fears nothing as much as acting against it.
But the country cannot allow a member to evade fulfilling the duties incumbent on every citizen. The administration of the country requires each man to take his oath of allegiance, to take part in judging and condemning; each man is obliged to enter the military service, and if he refuses he will be exposed to punishment, exile, imprisonment, and even death. And here again the Christian is called upon to fulfill his duty toward God.
The Christian knows that all these things are required of him by men who do not know the truth, and therefore he who does know it must testify it to those who do not. The violence, imprisonment, perhaps even death, to which the Christian will then be exposed in consequence of his refusal, will enable him to testify to the truth, not in words, but in deeds. Every act of violence, pillage, execution, and war is the result, not of the irrational force of nature, but of man’s ignorance of the truth.
And therefore, the greater the evil these men do, the further they are from the truth, the more desperate is their state, and the more necessary it is that they should be taught the truth. And a Christian can only transmit the knowledge of the truth to others by keeping away from the error they are in, and by returning good for evil. The whole duty of a Christian, the whole purpose of his life, which cannot be destroyed by death, lies in this.
Men linked together by deception form, we might say, a compact body. In the compactness of this body lies all the evil of the world.
Revolutions are only efforts to break this compact body by violence; but its component parts will last until an inward power is communicated to them that can force them asunder.
The chain that fetters them is ‘falsehood,’ ‘deception.’ The power that sets each link of this human chain free is ‘truth.’ The truth is transmitted to men by deeds.
Deeds, which bring the light to each man’s heart, can alone destroy the chain and remove one man after another out of the compact mass fettered by falsehood.
And this has gone on for eighteen hundred years.
The work began when the commandments of Christ were first placed before the world, and it will not end until all is fulfilled as Christ says (Matt. 5:18).
The Church, whose members tried to unite men by persuading them that it was necessary for salvation to blindly believe that the truth was in her, is no more. But the Church, whose followers are not united by promises of reward, but by good deeds, lives, and will live forever. That Church does not consist of men who cry ‘Lord, Lord,’ and live in sin, but of men who hear His words and follow His commandments.
Those who belong to that Church know that their lives will be blessed if they do not break the unity of the ‘Son of Man,’ and that their happiness can only be destroyed by their leaving the commandments of Christ unfulfilled. And therefore they follow them, and teach others to do the same.
It does not matter if these men are few in number or many. They are that Church which shall not be overcome, and which all men will join, sooner or later.
‘Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.’
THE END
