When this country was opened in the Western World the refuge of the oppressed from all nations, a new cry was heard in the world. Here was founded a “new order of things.” Men were learning that governments were founded, not to exploit or oppress men, but to protect them in the exercise of their equal rights; that here should be a land where liberty, justice, self-control should reign, and the man be above the thing. But the present conditions of things in this country do not promise aught auspicious to the peoples of the nations. Greed, corruption, criminality, violence, godlessness, are abroad in the land, and ever increasing. The life of Babylon and Rome is repeating in the Republic of the West. The last of earth’s nations, “time’s noblest offspring,” is going the way of all the earth; and what shall follow? Well the prophet asks, “What then shall one answer the messengers of the nation?” And the answer is, “That Jehovah hath founded Zion, and in her shall the afflicted of His people take refuge.”
A Better Banner
There are many old veterans on this Fourth of July who will look with moist eyes and quickening hearts to the red, white, and blue as it is flung to the breeze in the shape of the old flag. It will bring to mind days that are gone, old comrades, hard battles, hair-breadth escapes, the long separations by death, and oftentimes dear-bought victories. Many loved the flag for what it emblemized—freedom; and they love those principles still. Yet many question whether the flag has not come to mean tyranny and oppression in its primitive stages. It is grand always to follow a good cause, even of earth; yet in earth causes the most fine gold becomes dim, and men separate from God are sure to go astray. There is a banner and a cause better than the best of earth. That banner is truth; that cause is Christ’s, not for the destruction of men, but for their salvation. “Thou hast given a banner to them that fear Thee, that it may be displayed because of the truth.” And the Christian patriot may well pray: “O send out Thy light and Thy truth; let them lead me; let them bring me unto Thy holy hill, and to Thy tabernacles.” God’s banner may lead into dark valleys, into hard, rugged roads, up mountains of difficulties, through vales of suffering, pain, and anguish, to gardens of Gethsemane, to the dungeon and the rack, up the bleeding path of Calvary to the cross; but it ever and always leads to glorious victory in God. More glorious, more worthy of following, than any banner ever waved above men, is the banner of God’s truth. Enlist under its folds, and follow it to the end.
Love, not Force.
True and intelligent Christians will never seek to control the religious or non-religious opinions of even a single man, save by the law of love, and the method of persuasion and reason. They know in their own experience that Christ did not compel their allegiance by force; He won it by love. As did Christ toward them, so will they act toward others. And this is the Golden Rule.
