_Sixth._ Our Lord and his apostles never formed an issue between the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world. How utterly preposterous and absurd it is, to the mind of one who has noticed, that our Lord never made an issue between his kingdom, or his religion, and any civil government or kingdom of the world, to see some misguided creature trying to form a direct issue between the kingdom of God and whatever political institution he may chance to fall out with and trying to set the citizens in the kingdom of Christ in battle array with the citizens of the civil government! Such a man has no use for a church only as a kind of battering-ram to beat down some sinful institution that he has just perceived is to ruin the nation. He would have the kingdom of God a convenient engine, properly adjusted and poised, himself commander-in-chief, so that he can now bring it to bear upon Masons, then upon Odd Fellows, anon upon Sons of Temperance, then upon Slavery, or any other monster that may rise. But the man who stands upon an eminence lofty enough to discern the kingdom of God, beholds an institution with an aim transcendently higher than deciding upon the rights and wrongs of the political governments of the world, amending, correcting, and perfecting them; the superlatively noble, grand, and beneficent object of translating _individuals_, whether high or low, rich or poor, bond or free, whether their political institutions are good or bad, out of darkness into light, and out of the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of God, and in their few remaining days here, no matter what their earthly condition, prepare them for guests of the redeemed hosts who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb, in the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. _Seventh._ Christianity is _the thing_ to be promoted, and not to be used as a mere _instrumentality_, by men who care nothing about _it_, and who are doing but little to advance _it_, to promote some object of their _own worldly ambition_. We must promote Christianity _itself_, and not employ it as a mere means to promote something else. “Well, sir, what would you have a christian do in regard to rulers and civil governments?” says one. When acting as a citizen in the kingdom of God, or in the house of God, “Pray for kings and all that are in authority, that we may lead a peaceable and quiet life, in all godliness and honesty.” “Be subject to the powers that be,” remembering that “we have no continuing city here,” and that “this world is not our home.” When acting as a citizen of the civil government, be candid, quiet, peaceable, and kind, and do just what _you think right_, allowing every man the same privilege, as Christ has left us all free here, and leave the event with God.