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THE KINGDOM OF GOD.
331 this reign may or may not be history ; it is sufficient that it is the ideal. Even to-day if we change our point of view, and try to replace hatred with love, we shall find that there will be peace and plenty for the whole of the human race. Under the government of Love there can never be any discontent, and the need for heavy armament and armies disappearing, the money allotted to that department of national defence can be utilized for the general welfare of the masses. The science of modern politics is at war with the science of peace, and must be modified to suit the conditions which an advancing civilization demands. Despotism is already at an end, but the system of representative government, which seems to be better suited to modern times than absolute monarchy, has not been perfected as yet. The most enlightened form of government should mean a sort of modified socialism in which the different races of man· kind, the yellows, the reds, the blacks, and the whites, all live in a family-like union, in which no special privileges are recognized in any particular individuals, and where the sole test of the capacity to manage the affairs of the state consists in nothing other than love combined with competence.
Such seems to have been the original scheme of the Christian Church at the time of the apostles. Let us not be daunted by its failure, but rather try to remove the causes which brought it about. When people like Ananias and Sapphira are drawn to the church, not by the power of Love, but by a sense of fear excited by the miracles of the apostles, the cause of the church is not advanced in the least thereby. True love rests on wis
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