Sermon Excerpt
The Church, the State, and the Home
William Bishop Johnson sets the church, the state, and the home in their divinely appointed spheres, with the church as the moral and civilizing force that lifts households, nations, and peoples toward God.
Attribution
The following sermon excerpt is attributed to William Bishop Johnson and appears in The Scourging of a Race: And Other Sermons and Addresses, published by Beresford in 1904. The text has been formatted for readability and lightly cleaned for obvious transcription errors.
The Church, the State, and the Home
God has given to the world three distinct organizations: the church, the state, and the home. Each of these moves in its legitimate and divinely ordained sphere; each is governed by its peculiar laws and works out the great purposes underlying its existence.
There is a correlation between them, as there is running through all the works of God. The Creator intended that this trinity of forces should contribute much toward the unifying and civilizing of the human race; that they should steadily give to men of all nations and climes a solidarity of purpose and character that should reflect the wisdom and power of the God of the universe.
Their place in the human family is indeed unique–unique because divinely established–for we cannot conceive of any condition of society that is high and exalted which is not the direct sequence of one or all of these three influences which has swept across the face of this earth, regenerating all things, revolutionizing all things, Christianizing all things.
The Home
The home, with its altar of praise, its celestial atmosphere, its ties that bind the soul with bands of steel; its associations, pure, elevating, ennobling; here is the merry laughter of childhood mingling with the fatherly counsel and advice of old age; here, the silent movement of that mother-queen, who manages the affairs of her kingdom, not with standing armies nor mighty navies, but with a heaven-born smile, a tender touch, and an angel presence.
It is God who uncurtains eternity and gives to the place a vision of heaven, or plants in the soul such a deep and abiding love for home that no matter where the future may be cast, under what dark clouds of sorrow, amidst what barbarism or distress, the soul in its longings, as spontaneously as a sigh, cries with John Howard Payne.
Johnson here invokes Payne’s familiar hymn of home, holding up the household as a place hallowed by memory, affection, and divine kindness.
Emanating from this holy place come the characters upon whose broad shoulders rests the government of state. Out of this mould comes the man with those elements of worth that must stand at the helm upon the ship of state and steadily guide the affairs of national life.
God has entwined the home and state into a consecrated union and set the seal of divine approval upon the two, and “what God hath joined together let not man put asunder.”
However mighty is their influence, or beautiful in their activity, the kingdoms and empires of earth are but a reflex of the beauty and undeveloped resources of the home. All the magnificent heroism of our boys at the front, their deeds of unsurpassed daring, as well as the wild outbursts of patriotism which, like an unchained tornado, sweeps all before it and still staggers on, drunk in its maddening fury, adding victory to victory and glory to glory–all this splendid display of American manhood is but the glorious fruitage of the seed sown in the tender soil of home, watered and nurtured by the genius of American life, having ripened into the first fruits of a glorious harvest.
All hail to the home and state!
The Church
But overshadowing both of these potent forces is that celestial spirit: the church, born in the infinite mind of the infinite God, back in the undated ages of unlimited space; back amidst the silence of the council chambers of eternity; back where the draperies of eternity fell in awful folds to hide from angelic curiosity the doings of uncreated majesty.
Away back in the presence of the adorable and holy Three, where human eye had never pierced and human foot had never trod, there sitting clothed with light as with a garment and dashing from their fingers new worlds, and from new worlds new subjects to do heaven’s high behests, and in the subjects new ideals and purposes to gradually unfold the great master purposes of the infinite, transcendently holy, eternally great and good Ruler of the universe.
So the church was born–out of the mind of God, his own creation, born for the development of his own plan so far as it related to all worlds and peoples and ages.
He was the architect, drawing its plan and selecting the material that was to compose the building. How rich in variance was to be its constituent parts!
He sounded the keynote of its operation and gave a faint forecast of its membership in the great commission, the marching orders of his church: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel.”
“All the world.” From the turbaned Oriental to the shivering Esquimaux; from the wild dwellers in caves and bushes to the home of the rich and noble; from the depth of heathenism and darkness into the center of civilization, until sin and vice and wickedness shall be supplanted by the reign of love and joy, and the white-winged dove of peace shall build its nest in the cannon’s mouth, and God’s Fatherhood and man’s brotherhood be accepted as the essential law of heaven and earth.
The church is founded upon the immutability of his sovereignty and omnipotence, built upon the infinitude of his own perfections. It is as old as its Founder, having existed in his infinite mind before all worlds, even from the beginning, whatever that uncalendared hour was.
For the voice of inspiration breaks in upon the silence of a newly created world, and as it begins the first revolution upon its axis, thunders, “In the beginning God created heaven and earth.”
When, O thou King eternal; when, O thou Master Builder, didst spring all the harmony and order and beauty that I find in me and about me?
And the voice exclaimed, “In the beginning!” Back of flying clouds, rolling floods, chaotic confusion; before angelic legions or hills immortal; back in the beginning.
It is God’s church: “Upon this Rock I build my church.” “I the Lord do keep it; I will water it every moment; lest any hurt it” (Isa. 27:3).
“No weapon formed against thee shall prosper and every tongue that riseth in judgment I will condemn.”
David, Israel’s sweet singer, exclaims, “Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God.” She is spoken of as “God’s beloved” (Ps. 60:5), “peculiar people” (1 Pet. 2:9), “God’s heritage” (Jer. 12:7), “his jewels,” “flock of God,” “king’s daughter” (Ps. 45:13), “fold of Christ” (John 10:16), light of the world, apple of his eye, bride, Lamb’s wife (Rev. 21:9).
“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away. And there was no more sea. And I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”
The Church in the Community
Now, what does the church stand for in the community and world?
It is composed of the best type of manhood and womanhood. In her walls dwell the temperate, just, righteous, merciful, holy, Christly citizenship. Her people are peaceable, for their ruler is the Prince of peace and peaceable dispositions predominate their minds.
The church has always been the pioneer of every great moral reform, no matter whether in the home or state. The church has only to speak and men hearken and obey. It is not only the voice of authority; it is the voice of God.
Every great reform that has blessed the world has been born in the church, and every great reformer has drawn his best inspiration, his highest incentives, from the church and its invincible leadership. In the patriarchal, prophetic, apostolic, or postapostolic ages, the leaders of all reforms drew their inspiration and got their best impressions from the church.
How long the list of these immortal names that stand as stars of the first magnitude in the magnificent firmament of moral reformers! Moses and Jeremiah; John the Baptist and Paul of Tarsus; Christian martyrs and Calvin, Luther, Cranmer, Wycliffe, John Howard, Wesley, Eliot, Roger Williams, its Garrisons, Phillips, Stearns, Sumners, Pillsburys, Douglasses, and an innumerable host of princely spirits whose voices are long since hushed in the silence of death and whose lives stand out amongst us immortalized by splendor and fragrant with good deeds.
The Church and Civilization
The church is the precursor of all civilization. All this grand order and improvement you see about us is the unfolding of the truth underlying the church and of which it is an exponent.
We are beneficiaries of the past. We owe a debt of eternal gratitude to all the great men who honored God with a noble life and sought to work in harmony with the divine mind in developing man and lifting him heavenward.
Say what you will, these closing hours of the nineteenth century are big with significance. God is working out his plans among the nations of the earth. The handful of corn upon the top of the mountain is beginning to yield a glorious harvest; kingdoms built upon centuries of bloodshed and oppression are tottering and falling; the stronghold of Roman Catholicism is trembling upon its foundation, and there is close at hand a verification of the prophecy, “I will overturn, and overturn, until He shall come whose right it is.”
The prophet fixed his eye upon this very hour when, down through the unborn centuries, he shot his vision as swift as a thunderbolt from the sky and said, “Men shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase on the earth.”
How true! See the triumph of human genius today. All through the church.
Science has searched out the deep things of nature, surprised the secrets of the most distant stars, disentombed the memorials of the everlasting hills, taught the vapor to toil, the winds to worship, and the lightning to speak; tunneled the longest mountain range, spanned the sweeping rivers, made the world a vast whispering gallery, and brought foreign nations into one civilized family.
It has stolen the witchery of the earth and sky and gathered them into her enchanted palace, and by the printed page has echoed the crash of revolution; by the silent thunders of thought has unhinged the gates of empires and made the monarch’s crown to sit uneasy upon his brow, while his kingdom became the kingdom of our Lord and his Christ.
The church has created all the sentiment that has resulted in this civilization of ours. It is responsible for all the purity of life and beauty of character found in the individual and nation.
The best and highest jurisprudence is but the reflex of the principle of God’s Zion. From the midst of her, God has given the world its grandest statesmanship; look upon Daniel, the product of Old Testament economy, and Gladstone, the representative of New Testament times.
It has given us the highest type of intrepid leadership; see Moses, Joshua and Queen Victoria, Washington and Lincoln; its most heroic and patriotic warriors, David, Constantine, Grant; its loftiest poets and truest historians, and has steadily poured forth streams of blessings into every class and condition of humanity.
The church is the friend of humanity, the asylum for all nations. Its doctrines are true and elevating. It only asks that its discipleship shall march under this standard, with its triple declaration: “One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism.”
Then shall it see the travail of its soul and be satisfied, and when the unnumbered hosts of earth’s blood-bought and sanctified shall crowd celestial seats or climb hills immortal, there shall go forth victorious shouts of the ransomed: “Redeemed, redeemed, out of every nation, and people and tongue, and made kings and priests to God.”
Christianity and Citizenship
It is argued that the church should not lift its voice in things pertaining to the state, but silently sit and look on as an interested spectator, for fear it may soil its garments or lose its influence. This is the argument of those who do not stop to consider that Christianity does not antagonize citizenship, nor is it intended to quench the fires of patriotism.
Jesus said, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s,” thereby divorcing the two in the sense of giving each a fairer and freer activity. Give the earthly authority the loyalty that it demands, and to heavenly authority whatever it demands.
Christianity does not destroy individuality. The mental peculiarities remain the same. The status of the individual before the law remains the same, it being expected only that the individual, with new ideals and principles, shall contribute to the well-being of the community a loftier sentiment of right and justice, a purer character, and a better life.
Now the church lifts up the standard for the people. This is one of the things Christ meant when he said, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.”
We have today an exhibition of the splendid effects Christianity has upon the nations of the earth. The waging of war upon humanitarian principles is a thing unheard of in the annals of warfare among any people.
And yet, this is what Christianity has done for the nations of the earth: awakened a mighty nation to the cry of the oppressed and forced her to bare her breast to the leaden bullet, and offer her sons upon the altar of sacrifice and sufferings, in order that the oppressor may be driven from among men and the wounds of the oppressed be bound up and healed.
Christianity finds its best expression in the gifts it offers. It is a system of giving. God gave his Son. His Son gives to believers eternal life, and they in turn are commanded to give the best they have, the best they are, and the best they may be upon the altar of Christian service.
God Hasten the Day
And since we are proceeding upon these humanitarian principles, may we not hope that the conscience of the nation may be aroused to the cry of hundreds of widows and orphans in the far away South, whose husbands and fathers have been ruthlessly shot, burned at the stake, roasted alive, tortured and murdered in a way that would make the untutored and uncivilized savage who has never heard of humanity stand still and shudder at a barbarism that sinks beneath that of the blackest heathenism that has ever scarred and damned the face of the earth.
God hasten the day when the conscience of America shall be awakened.
Source Note
William Bishop Johnson, The Scourging of a Race: And Other Sermons and Addresses (Beresford, 1904). A cataloged digital copy is available through Google Books: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/William_Bishop_Johnson_The_Scourging_of_a_Race?id=uk1AAQAAMAAJ