A Dark Picture

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Apr 1, 1909

ONE of those horrible occurrences which demonstrate the utter inability even of a so-called Christian civilization to control human passion, has recently put another blot on the page of history in the State of Texas. A Southern paper, the Columbia State, of South Carolina, handles the matter in a vigorous and forcible way:—

And so in Texas they have burned another negro. The press despatches tell us that one thousand savages stood by and watched while the flames swept over the hopeless, depraved, but brave wretch who gave up his life to make a Texan holiday. It is wonderful to think of, strange, almost impossible to believe. This is Texas, this the twentieth century, and this was an assemblage of persons immensely flattered by being described as “civilized.” And they burned at the stake a human being. One thousand persons, presumably with an admixture of women and children, stood by, watched the horror, gorged their savage instincts, sated their barbarous hates, fatted and regaled upon the sort of spectacle that pleased and edified the wild and untamed Indian.

How discouraging it is! How hopeless it is—to think that we live in the same country with such people, to think—God forbid—that we may even have such people about us. And yet we—we poor hypocrites—are so good as to look with horror upon such foreign “scum” as the Russians, the Turks, and to deplore the pillage and disorder that sometimes mark the affairs of their countries. We should hang our heads in shame. We have heard of no Russians burning a man to death at the stake. We have heard of no turbulent Turks straying so far from the dictates of mercy and humanity as to do such a deed.

Only that gospel which really renews the mind and transforms the nature can eradicate from the human heart those brutal instincts which under any ordinary conditions reveal themselves in less shocking forms, but which under any extraordinary stimulus will sweep their possessor into diabolical deeds of supreme devilishness. The influence of race, or country, or public opinion is not sufficient to overcome sin or to prevent the revelation of its extreme meaning when the subduing influences of the Spirit of God are cast aside.