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by R. W. Sloane

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the Vol. 1, No. 21, July 1, 1868 issue of The Christian Statesman.

The world worships success; he who succeeds is its hero. So long as the success of a cause is doubtful the majority are cautious of committing themselves in its favor; when this is assured, its friends are multiplied with inconceivable rapidity. Fifteen years ago the Abolitionists were a handful, a sect everywhere spoken against. There was no point on which men were more anxious, than to preserve themselves from the charge of any connection with this dreaded horror-- abolitionism. The young politician began his first speech with the stereotyped formula--"I am no abolitionist." The new member of Congress shouted first, "Mr. Speaker, I am no abolitionist," and especially the young preacher was careful, as soon as possible, to calm anxious minds by a sarcastic drive at the abolitionists. Today you may search the country, as Diogenes searched Athens with a lighted candle, and you shall not find a man that has not been all his life long a most determined and effectual enemy of slavery, always in favor of abolition! Success has secured for this cause an abundance of friends.

Our National Reform movement, which rises in moral grandeur above all reforms of the day as far as the heavens are above the earth, is yet in its first stage. It is destined to cover the skies but it is yet but a cloud like a man's hand. It has taken hold only of the more thoughtful, philosophical, and religious minds. It is at present in the stage of sentiment, has scarcely entered upon that of conflict; consequently, men are in doubt as to the issue and are asking inquiringly, somewhat doubtingly, as to the prospect of success? That question settled and their relation to the movement is settled.

In the present stage of this movement it must depend upon the men of principle, faith, and courage, upon those who espouse a cause not because it is popular, but because it is right, and who, strong in the majesty of a great principle, are willing to work and wait.

The timid and the time-serving, those who cannot tell what they think of Christ until they see how the rulers and the Pharisees are going, will not be found at present in the ranks of the National Reformers; they must have time; they will fall in as soon as they can walk by sight; at present the battle must be fought by those who walk by faith.

The goal of human society will be reached when this reform has been accomplished, that is when all its results have been worked out. The most visionary idealist, if compelled to define his conception of the perfection of human society, would find that in all its leading features it would conform to the divine pattern which is embodied in the Scriptures, and which society will assume when the reign of the Kingdom of God has been established. He who believes that the world is advancing, that there is progress in society as in every other department of the divine government, who looks forward to a time of universal peace, of universal liberty, of universal equality and the universal triumph of truth and justice, whether consciously or unconsciously, believes in our ultimate success.

The blind and frantic devotion of our nation to material interests, a spirit which ignores all the higher moral purposes of government, which, like Mammon in heaven, sees nothing but gold, is leading, or rather driving us to results which will ere long compel the most infatuated to open their eyes to the necessity of some radical remedy for our political dangers. We are well assured that when the hour comes, it will not be found in any scheme outside of vital Christianity; it will be in no other than the Tree whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. Even from the nettle of our danger we may pluck the flower of hope for our deliverance.

The conviction is becoming wider and deeper that the road which we are at present travelling will lead to national disaster and ruin, that we are but following in the path of the nations which have preceded us, and that the only hope lies in an attempt to infuse into our nation those preservative elements which are found in Christianity alone. We hold that the destiny of our Reform and Christianity are the same; the two are not so much kindred as they are identical. The religion of the future will not be Pantheism, or Positivism, or Spiritualism, nor any form of pure Theism, nor as some seem to imagine a combination or rather a conglomeration of all these, but it will be Christianity, the purest, the most heavenly, and what is much to our purpose here, the strongest form of belief that the world has known. The state to which society is tending may be learned not from the speculations of socialism, nor from the utopian dreams of theorists, but from the descriptions of the holy Bards and Prophets, written by t he inspiration of God and found in the pages of Divine Revelation.

Christ is King, he must reign until he has put all enemies under his feet, and of these enemies none are more certainly destined to annihilation than governments built upon infidel and atheistic theories. The kingdoms of this world must become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.

The baptism of the Holy Ghost and of fire, which the world awaits, will mould all institutions in that divine pattern given to us in the Word of God, and give to the world governments, founded not like the miserable, tottering fabrics of today, on the shifting sands of expediency, but on those principles of justice and righteousness which are immovable as the pillars of the eternal throne.

We do not undertake to say when the result toward which we are aiming will be secured. This is not a material point. It may be that the zeal of the Lord of Hosts will accomplish it this year or the next; it may not be in this century or the next. It is not for us to know the times or seasons which the Father hath put in his own power. The all sufficient fact is that it will be accomplished, that our success is absolutely certain. To any who may be in doubt or who may feel inclined to throw themselves in the path of this movement, we beg leave to quote the noble words of John Calvin addressed to the King of France:

Let not a contemptuous idea of our insignificance dissuade you from an investigation of this cause. We indeed are perfectly conscious how poor and abject we are, in the presence of God we are miserable sinners and in the sight of men most despised, we are (if you will) the mere dregs and offscourings of the world, or worse if worse can be named, so that before God there remains nothing of which we can boast, save only his mercy, by which without any merit of our own we are admitted to the hope of eternal salvation; and before men not even this much remains, since we can glory only in our infirmities, a thing which in the estimation of men it is the greatest ignominy even tacitly to admit.

But our doctrine must stand sublime above all the glory of the world and invincible by all its power, because it is not ours but that of the living God and his Anointed whom the Father has appointed King that he may rule from sea to sea and from the rivers unto the ends of the earth, and so rule as to smite the whole earth, and its strength of iron and of brass, its splendor of gold and of silver with the mere rod of his mouth, and break them in pieces like a potter's vessel, according to the magnificent predictions of the prophets respecting his kingdom.

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