p. 5 | Our Days and the Days of Old by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 18, 1907

Our Days and the Days of Old

By C. M. S.

EVEN secular papers are comparing our days to the days of old when wickedness was so rife that destruction must come. There have been numerous comments in the press recently concerning the scarcity of righteous men in our large cities. A committee was appointed in one large city to ascertain if they could find as many righteous men in that place as Lot was asked to find in Sodom. They report having found but twenty-eight persons upon whose names the whole committee was willing to pass. The press of other cities have taken up the matter and declared their disbelief in the ability of a committee to find that many righteous persons in their own cities. Of course the whole matter is a farce. God alone is able to judge of the righteousness of human beings. But the incident does show the similarity between our times and the days of Lot and Noah, even the people themselves being judges. The iniquities of the days of Noah culminated in the flood—the destruction of the world. The iniquities of Sodom and Gomorrah culminated in their destruction by fire—an ensample unto them that after should live ungodly.

The great cities of the world have become organized societies of plunder—of sin, of ungodliness. How long God will hold back from them the fires of their destruction, he only knows. Take San Francisco for an example—and San Francisco does not stand alone in this by any means. The same systems are working in each and all of them to some extent. From an exchange we take the following summary of conditions believed to exist in San Francisco:—

So far as facts already at hand indicate, the authorities at San Francisco have been bribed by the following public interests. The San Francisco Gas and Electric Company paid members of the board $750 each. Two telephone companies bid against each other for the supervisors’ votes. The Pacific States Telephone Company paid to ten supervisors $5,000 each. The Home Telephone Company paid to ten supervisors $3,500 each, and then outbid its rivals by giving seven supervisors $6,000 apiece in addition, and by presenting Abraham Ruef and Mayor Schmitz with a sum estimated at $150,000. For the franchise itself, worth in the neighborhood of $1,000,000, the company paid the city $25,000. The United Railroads Company paid each supervisor $40,000, and to Schmitz and Ruef $400,000. Beside these figures the $500 paid each of the supervisors by the so-called “Fight Trust,” which operated a vicious resort, is a bagatelle.

The furnishing of the new Capitol at Harrisburg, Pa., has brought to light the dark manipulations of the hand of graft. These are but samples. Place them in connection with the organized municipal system that conspires with fraud, robbery, and immorality to pile up gold at the cost of everything good, and you have a condition of things that is crying more loudly to heaven than Sodom and Gomorrah ever did. Those suffered the vengeance of eternal fire. How long shall outraged justice wait on these?

And still many of our religious contemporaries profess to believe that these revelations of corruption “indicate a healthful reaction against underground currents of evil.” Nay, verily; these things are not working out in that way. The Word of God does not promise any such reaction. We have had terrible exposures of corruption in recent months. But each exposure seems to leave still more to expose. “Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse,” says the Word. If these exposures truly indicated a healthy reaction, the above words of Scripture would not be true.

This wicked world is ripening for its reaping; and they who pin their faith to a reaction toward righteousness, are planning for themselves a bitter disappointment. C. M. S.