The Crime Wave and God’s Law
The Springfield “Republican” of November 28 has an editorial on “The Crime Wave.” It starts out by saying, “The newspapers are shocking to read nowadays, but we must not be disheartened.” And then, with an effort to minimize, it starts its second paragraph with these words: “Seldom have the records been more deplorable than just now. In one day we read of enough shocking and sensational cases for a normal month or year. Four professional assassins, who might have stepped out of the worst days of the Renaissance, are convicted in New York.” Then after enumerating several of the cases prominently before the public, it says: “It is a black record, and it would be pleasant to suppress it, but we may as well face the facts. These occasional cases of peculiar atrocity, or abnormality, are not the disease itself, but the symptoms of the disease.” And this is true, that disease lies back of all crime; nor can it be remedied to any great extent by civil law. It is indigenous to the natural heart of man, which “is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.” The sad thing is that so many of those who profess even to be servants of the Lord Jesus Christ, have turned away from the hearing of the law of God, and are trusting to human schemes to effect that which can only be accomplished by divine aid. It ought to be a prayer of every devoted servant of God, “It is time for Thee, Lord, to work: for they have made void Thy law.”