Required reading
Discussions (Vol 2) by Robert L. Dabney (Available from Amazon or free here) - Read 'Christians, pray for your country'.
My summary
Today Dabney encourages Christians to pray for the United States to the disunity between North and South.
He outlines:
(i) the cause of the disunity;
(ii) the consequence of such disunity (including civil war).
What grabbed me
I appreciated Dabney's concern for the reputation of Christianity: 'If such a crime against God and man be wrought in this land of thirty thousand evangelical ministers and four millions of Christians, how burning the sarcasm which it will contain against your Christianity ! What, was there not enough of the oil of love in all these four millions of the servants of the God of love to soothe the surging billows of party strife ? "Was there not enough of the majesty of moral weight in these four millions of Christians to say to the angry waters, " Peace, be still ? " Were not all these strong enough to throw the arms of their love around their fellow-citizens, keep down the hands that sought each others' throats, and constrain them by a sweet compulsion to be brethren ? Did this mighty church stand idly by and see phrenzy immolate so many of the dearest hopes of man and so much of the glory of God on her hellish altar, and not rather rush between and receive the sword in its own breast? And this church knew, too, that the fiend had borrowed the torch of discord from the altar of Christianity, and that therefore Christians were doubly bound to arrest her murderous hand before the precious sacrifice was lost in the conflagration ! If this be suffered, then shame on the boasted Christianity of America, and of the nineteenth century! With all its parade of light and evangelism, wherein will it be less impotent and spurious than the false Christianity which permitted and sanctioned the butcheries of the Crusades, the torture of the Inquisition, or any other great iniquity of the dark ages ?'
Christ's sake should be at the forefront of all that we do.
Next week's reading
Read 'The Christian's best motive for patriotism'.
Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.
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