To watch, to fight, with steady front to meet and repel temptation—in other words to do no evil, is, however, though an important part, but one, and not the most important part of Christian work.
The Church of the Living God bears no resemblance to those communities of ants where a certain number of these curious insects form a sort of standing army, and have no other duties but to defend and battle for the commonwealth; the building, and provisioning, and other duties of the ant hill belonging to the others, and not to them, nor to take an illustration from the arrangements of human society, does Christ’s kingdom resemble this, or that of any other sovereign, where the military, wearing a distinct garb, and exempted from those productive labors whereby others support themselves, and add to the wealth of the country, form a distinct order of the community.
The type of a Christian is seen not in lands where citizens and soldiers, working and fighting men from different classes; but rather in those troubled regions of the East, where the husbandman, constantly exposed to the attack of murderers and robbers, ploughs the soil with a carbine slung at his back, or a sword slung at his side. The true Christian must be a soldier, and he must be a true soldier, bold, courageous and active in defensive and aggressive warfare.—GUTHRIE