Note and Comment

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 28, 1907

Men frequently assume that there are laws higher than the written law, and thus assuming, make laws of their own or perform acts contrary to all law, and justify them by “the higher unwritten law.” This is a most dangerous procedure in reference to both human and divine law. It puts the club, the rope, and the faggot in the hands of lynchers, sacrifices the lives of innocent and guilty together, and spreads the fabric of human life before the new generation at a “marked down” valuation. At least two ministers last Sunday took for their text the unprintable Thaw trial now on in New York City, put themselves in the position of judge and jury, and pronounced guiltless and worthy of commendation the man indicted for murder. All this because of a certain “higher unwritten law.” Concerning this the New York Sun says:—

It is more than pitiful to hear murder justified and commended from the pulpit, and to find there not the influences of the sermon on the mount, but the loose mouthings of the yellow neurotics. . . . To weep over the red hand, to proclaim the gospel according to Cain—here silly lips in the pulpit breed new murders. These violent clergymen are using all the power of their sacred office and of their standing in the community to pull down the law and to promote murder, an industry in which the United States already stands at the head.

It is a far cry from such a course to the commission given by our Lord to his followers. But a similar course, with equally serious results, is that which many professed followers of Christ are taking in interpreting the law of God to suit their wishes or convenience, or in setting their own acts above that law.