A Long Step Backward

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 7, 1915

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 42, No. 35.

A Long Step Backward

THOMAS J. LENNON, presiding justice of one of our appellate courts, referring to the Frank lynching, said: “If a few headstrong and violent men are permitted to take the life of a person convicted of crime, but whose punishment, legally determined, appears to them to be insufficient, we shall take a long step backward—almost to days antedating the dawn of civilization.”

The trial of men through the newspapers and by popular sentiment, often of the mob, is increasingly becoming a determining factor in the attempts to administer justice. Juries and judges are swayed, oftentimes contrary to their convictions, by these influences. And indeed, as Mr. Lennon suggests, such conditions are a long step backward. We have some of the best men and women living to-day that the world has ever known; but our civilization, taken en masse, is largely a sham. The humanity of to-day is very much the same as the humanity of all the ages of the past; only if we will give heed to the Bible suggestion, the wicked section of humanity is growing worse.