The Kingdom of God Is Within You | Page 3

THE
ESTABLISHMENT OF A PUBLIC OPINION
XI. THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF LIFE HAS ALREADY
ARISEN IN OUR SOCIETY, AND WILL INFALLIBLY PUT AN
END TO THE PRESENT ORGANIZATION OP OUR LIFE BASED
ON FORCE--WHEN THAT WILL BE
XII. CONCLUSION--REPENT YE, FOR THE KINGDOM OF
HEAVEN IS AT HAND

"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. "--John viii.
32.
"Fear not them which hill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but
rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in
hell."--MATT. x. 28.
"Ye have been bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men."--I
COR. vii. 23.

"THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS WITHIN YOU."
CHAPTER I.
THE DOCTRINE OF NON-RESISTANCE TO EVIL BY FORCE
HAS BEEN PROFESSED BY A MINORITY OF MEN FROM THE
VERY FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIANITY.
Of the Book "What I Believe"--The Correspondence Evoked by it--
Letters from Quakers--Garrison's Declaration--Adin Ballou, his Works,
his Catechism--Helchitsky's "Net of Faith"--The Attitude of the World
to Works Elucidating Christ's Teaching--Dymond's Book "On
War"--Musser's "Non-resistance Asserted"--Attitude of the

Government in 1818 to Men who Refused to Serve in the Army
--Hostile Attitude of Governments Generally and of Liberals to Those
who Refuse to Assist in Acts of State Violence, and their Conscious
Efforts to Silence and Suppress these Manifestations of Christian
Non-resistance.
Among the first responses some letters called forth by my book were
some letters from American Quakers. In these letters, expressing their
sympathy with my views on the unlawfulness for a Christian of war
and the use of force of any kind, the Quakers gave me details of their
own so-called sect, which for more than two hundred years has actually
professed the teaching of Christ on non-resistance to evil by force, and
does not make use of weapons in self-defense. The Quakers sent me
books, from which I learnt how they had, years ago, established beyond
doubt the duty for a Christian of fulfilling the command of
non-resistance to evil by force, and had exposed the error of the
Church's teaching in allowing war and capital punishment.
In a whole series of arguments and texts showing that war--that is, the
wounding and killing of men--is inconsistent with a religion founded
on peace and good will toward men, the Quakers maintain and prove
that nothing has contributed so much to the obscuring of Christian truth
in the eyes of the heathen, and has hindered so much the diffusion of
Christianity through the world, as the disregard of this command by
men calling themselves Christians, and the permission of war and
violence to Christians.
"Christ's teaching, which came to be known to men, not by means of
violence and the sword," they say, "but by means of non-resistance to
evil, gentleness, meekness, and peaceableness, can only be diffused
through the world by the example of peace, harmony, and love among
its followers."
"A Christian, according to the teaching of God himself, can act only
peaceably toward all men, and therefore there can be no authority able
to force the Christian to act in opposition to the teaching of God and to
the principal virtue of the Christian in his relation with his neighbors."

"The law of state necessity," they say, "can force only those to change
the law of God who, for the sake of earthly gains, try to reconcile the
irreconcilable; but for a Christian who sincerely believes that following
Christ's teaching will give him salvation, such considerations of state
can have no force."
Further acquaintance with the labors of the Quakers and their
works--with Fox, Penn, and especially the work of Dymond (published
in 1827)--showed me not only that the impossibility of reconciling
Christianity with force and war had been recognized long, long ago, but
that this irreconcilability had been long ago proved so clearly and so
indubitably that one could only wonder how this impossible
reconciliation of Christian teaching with the use of force, which has
been, and is still, preached in the churches, could have been maintained
in spite of it.
In addition to what I learned from the Quakers I received about the
same time, also from America, some information on the subject from a
source perfectly distinct and previously unknown to me.
The son of William Lloyd Garrison, the famous champion of the
emancipation of the negroes, wrote to me that he had read my book, in
which he found ideas similar to those expressed by his father in the
year 1838, and that, thinking it would be interesting to me to know this,
he sent me a declaration or proclamation of "non- resistance" drawn up
by his father nearly fifty years ago.
This declaration came about under the following circumstances:
William Lloyd Garrison took part in a discussion on