The conception of a young and energetic God, an Invisible Prince growing
in strength and wisdom, who calls men and women to his service and who
gives salvation from self and mortality only through self-abandonment to
his service, necessarily involves a demand for a complete revision and
fresh orientation of the life of the convert.
God faces the blackness of the Unknown and the blind joys and confusions
and cruelties of Life, as one who leads mankind through a dark jungle
to a great conquest. He brings mankind not rest but a sword. It is plain
that he can admit no divided control of the world he claims. He concedes
nothing to Caesar. In our philosophy there are no human things that
are God’s and others that are Caesar’s. Those of the new thought cannot
render unto God the things that are God’s, and to Caesar the things that
are Caesar’s. Whatever claim Caesar may make to rule men’s lives and
direct their destinies outside the will of God, is a usurpation. No king
nor Caesar has any right to tax or to service or to tolerance, except
he claim as one who holds for and under God. And he must make good his
claim. The steps of the altar of the God of Youth are no safe place for
the sacrilegious figure of a king. Who claims “divine right” plays with
the lightning.
The new conceptions do not tolerate either kings or aristocracies or
democracies. Its implicit command to all its adherents is to make plain
the way to the world theocracy. Its rule of life is the discovery and
service of the will of God, which dwells in the hearts of men, and the
performance of that will, not only in the private life of the believer
but in the acts and order of the state and nation of which he is a part.
I give myself to God not only because I am so and so but because I am
mankind. I become in a measure responsible for every evil in the world
of men. I become a knight in God’s service. I become my brother’s
keeper. I become a responsible minister of my King. I take sides against
injustice, disorder, and against all those temporal kings, emperors,
princes, landlords, and owners, who set themselves up against God’s rule
and worship. Kings, owners, and all who claim rule and decisions in the
world’s affairs, must either show themselves clearly the fellow-servants
of the believer or become the objects of his steadfast antagonism.