The civil power is the power of arbitrary force to compel men who will not be righteous, to at least be civil, that men may live together in peace and quietness. The true power of the church is the power of divine love manifest in the flesh, to win men to lead righteous lives. The tares are to be allowed to grow with the wheat until the harvest. Then God will send forth His angels to gather out the tares to burn them. No human effort of arbitrary force can be used in rooting them out, lest in the act the wheat shall be rooted also.
Every civil law has the power of the sword back of it.
If it is right to make law, then it is right to enforce it. In denying the church the power of the sword, Jesus therefore forbade the church to ask the state for laws enforcing beliefs and observances. The early church, strong only in the power of God, triumphed grandly, even over the opposing forces of a false religion, upheld by the state. Only when she allied herself with the state, seeking its aid, did she deny her God, lose her power, and darken the world into a night of a thousand years. The present effort of the church to get the state to enforce the observance of Sunday, and to introduce the teaching of Christianity into state schools, is but a revival of the pagan and papal doctrine of force in religious things, and as such it is antichristian.