Lawlessness and God’s Law
THE Outlook (New York) speaks of the recent Springfield, Ohio, lynching as being “an outbreak of lawlessness which has been smoldering in the community for a long time,” and adds: “There are unnumbered communities in the United States, outwardly peaceable to-day, which are in fact as lawless as was Springfield, Ohio, on Monday and Tuesday of last week. . . . We shall continue to have lawlessness met with lawlessness until we systematically and promptly meet it with law.” The primary reason why there is so much lawlessness in the land to-day is that men have set aside the very highest law,—God’s law,—and are trying to run their affairs independently of him. It is even proclaimed from some pulpits that the law of ten commandments has been abolished; and from other pulpits that God’s law does not mean what it says, since it directs that the seventh day be observed as the Sabbath, while most Christians observe the first day in its stead, under authority of the church. What else but lawlessness can be expected to follow such disregard of the highest law that is known? And what can cure this moral epidemic but a return to God’s great moral standard? It is to this end the third angel’s message is sounding in men’s ears to-day.