Note and Comment

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 12, 1911

Increase of Crime

The Scriptures of truth declare that evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse even unto the time of the end. This prediction is being fulfilled on every side. We need only to admit the testimony of our own senses. According to the Nation of March 2, 1911, the English Home Office, with its highly organized system, speaks, in its blue book on criminal statistics for 1909, of “the steady increase of crime during the last ten years.”

When an authority like this makes such a statement, the Nation believes “that it is safe to say that that increase is a demonstrated fact.” According to the English blue book, the increase of crime “is largely due to a general relaxation in public sentiment with regard to it.”

The world is coming to regard crime with greater tolerance than formerly. This no doubt is due to the liberal views and teachings regarding questions of morality, which are in evidence on every side at the present time. When ministers of the gospel preach that the law of ten commandments has been abrogated, that the Scriptures of truth can no longer be accepted as the revealed will of God to man, that some of the fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion which have been sacredly regarded in the past, are no longer worthy of credence, what may be expected of the effect upon the public? The inevitable tendency is the lowering of the standard in every community, and in a greater prevalence of crime we reap the fruits of this seed sowing.