Note and Comment

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 10, 1916

As in the Days of Lot

OUR Saviour declares in the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of Luke that “as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. . . . Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; . . . even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.” Verses 26-30.

In the days of these ancients the hearts of men were set upon their own selfish interests. Pride, the love of ease and of pleasure, filled the hearts of men. In the days of Lot, particularly, licentiousness was the great prevailing sin, and the one above all others for which the cities of the plain were destroyed.

That similar conditions exist to an alarming extent at the present time is too evident to need demonstration by the statement of facts and statistics. Several reports of the conditions existing in our large cities, made by vice commissions which have undertaken investigations, reveal an alarming state of affairs in the social world at the present time.

A few months ago the governor of one of the large Eastern States appointed a commission to investigate social conditions existing in one of the large metropolitan cities on the Atlantic coast. This report has been made public, and astounding are its revelations. Referring to this report, the New York Times says:—

No names are mentioned in the report, although men in all walks of life—ministers, lawyers, bankers, and business men—are implicated. The names, the members of the commission say, will always be kept secret. If revealed, it is asserted, the divorce courts would be clogged with business. Many of the men charged with continued immorality, are leading figures in the church life of the city.

Of these men the report declares:—

There is nothing more reprehensible than some of the practices of a number of esteemed and prominent business and professional men. The practices of the red-light district are pale and mild compared to the acts of some of these so-called “Christian gentlemen.” We are led to believe that of all the occupations for women, the close association with a man in a private office is one of the most likely to lead to immorality. Parents and guardians should be fully aware of this danger that a young and inexperienced girl is liable to encounter.

In this large city the commission discovered that there exists, the same as doubtless is found in other large cities, a regular system for disposing of or caring for the offspring of these illegitimate unions. It was found that not only physicians and nurses, but social and religious workers, were members of this system and cooperated with it. Of the work of these institutions and of the care they give to these children, the report says:—

And the institutions—day after day, month after month, year after year, they receive healthy, plump infants into their wards and watch them hour after hour go rapidly down to death. They know that practically all of those that immediately after birth are separated from their mothers will die; yet year after year they keep up this nefarious, murderous traffic.

We do not attempt in this study to settle the many complex problems relating to the illegitimate, but we believe that the facts show that society’s method in many instances is one of repression and virtual murder. All of this is done in the effort to preserve a family’s good name, to prevent a girl’s reputation from being smirched, to save the man in the case from facing the consequences of his act. Altogether it is a well-organized hushing up by a system of subterfuges and repression in order that certain individuals shall not have to face openly what they have done. And aiding in this is a band of doctors, clergymen, mothers, fathers, and institutions, conniving and plotting and having a hand in the killing of an absolutely helpless child, all in the name of virtue and purity, for the sake of saving somebody’s home.

We cannot believe that the particular city investigated by this commission is worse than many others, and we refer to the finding of this commission only to point the lesson as to the conditions which exist in the world, the conditions which the Scriptures of Truth declare will exist just before the coming of the Lord. It is a sad commentary upon twentieth-century civilization that much of this crime is legalized and carried on under protection of the law. It becomes, however, none the less reprehensible or odious in the sight of God.