ATJ
IT would be difficult to use language in a looser way than by calling this “a Christian Nation.” In all the Nation there is not a single town, nor a village even, in which the people are all Christians. A single family in which all are Christians is seldom found; and individual Christians are not abundant. We do not say these things to find fault; we are simply stating the facts in the case, as every person knows who looks at things as they are. Let any person anywhere in the land honestly ask himself the question, and honestly answer it, How many of my immediate neighbors and acquaintances actually show in the works of a godly life that they are real, consistent Christians? In the face of facts as they are, the answer only can be, Very few. How many are really separate from the world, and conformed to the will of Christ? PTUK January 28, 1892, page 28.1
Take even the churches themselves, and everybody knows, and the churches themselves confess, that many of their members will not bear the test of the precepts of Christ. Many, of them love the opera or the circus more than they love the prayer-meetings; and the excursion more than the services of the church; and the newspaper more than the sermon; and pleasure more than God; and the world more than Christ. Then, while it is thus with the church, where is the sense of calling the Nation, Christian? and while the Church is so nearly half full of worldlings, what is the use of talking about this being a Christian Nation? The trouble is that they put upon the term “Christian” a construction so loose that there is scarcely any discernible distinction between many of those who bear it and those who don’t, and then spread the term over the whole mass, and thus they have a “Christian” Nation. But so long as the term “Christian” means what the word of God means—so long as it means strict conformity to the precepts of Christ—just so long it will be that this is not, and cannot be, a Christian Nation, except by each individual’s becoming a Christian by an abiding, working faith in Christ. A. T. J. PTUK January 28, 1892, page 28.2