[203] Calling his disciples to him, he said to them, “Ye know that they which are accustomed to rule over the Gentiles, exercise lordship over them; and their great ones exercise authority upon them. But so it shall not be among you; but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister; and whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all. For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life at ransom for many.” Human governments are to be viewed as judicial punishments. If a people turn the grace of God into lasciviousness, or make their liberty an occasion for anarchy,—or if they refuse to belong to the “one fold and one Shepherd,” —they shall be scourged by governments of their own choosing, and burdened with taxation, and subjected to physical control, and torn by factions, and made to eat the fruit of their evil doings, until they are prepared to receive the liberty and the rest which remain, on earth as well as in heaven, for the people of God. This is in strict accordance with the arrangement of Divine Providence. So long as men contemn the perfect government of the Most High, and will not fill up the measure of Christ's sufferings in their own persons, just so long will they desire to usurp authority over each other—just so long will they pertinaciously cling to human governments, fashioned in the likeness and administered in the spirit of their own disobedience. Now, if the prayer of our Lord be not a mockery; if the Kingdom of God is to come universally, and his will to be done on earth as it is in heaven; and if, in that kingdom, no carnal weapon can be wielded, and swords are beaten into ploughshares, and spears into pruning-hooks, and there is none to molest or make afraid, and no statute-book but the Bible, and no judge but Christ; then why are not Christians obligated to come out now, and be separate from “the kingdoms of this world,” which are all based upon the principle of violence, and which require their officers and servants to govern and be governed by that principle? . . . These are among the views we shall offer in connection with the heaven-originated cause of Peace,—views which any person is at liberty to controvert in our columns, and for which no man or body of men is responsible but ourselves. If any man shall affirm that the anti-slavery cause, as such, or any anti-slavery society, is answerable for our sentiments on this subject, to him may be justly applied the apostolic declaration,
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