Mob Law by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Dec 1, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 47.

Mob Law

By Editor

One of the worst manifestations of mob law which this country has known occurred in Cairo, Ill., November 11. The man lynched was a Negro who had murdered a white girl twenty-two years old. Ten thousand people cheered wildly when the mob fired 500 bullets into his body and dragged it for a mile and then burned it. Then this seemed only to whet the blood lust within them, for the mob battered its way through the steel bars of the jail, dragged out a white man “suspected of wife murder,” and hanged him. Governor Deneen had sent half a regiment of troops to Cairo, but the mob reached there first. When the troops arrived they found only the charred remains of the Negro, and the lifeless body of the white man. The despatch states, “For pure, uncontrolled ferocity, the work of the Cairo mob has been exceeded only once in the history of Illinois.” The sheriff did all that was in his power to keep his prisoner, but it was impossible, for he himself was captured and held a prisoner by the mob. Presumably the man would speedily have been brought to justice and executed for his crime. It would seem as tho normal men and women could wait for law—designed to protect all classes—to take its course. Doubtless there were many professed Christians in the mob; professed followers of Him who said, “Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, saith the Lord;” whose Word declares that there is a judgment in which every one shall be punished for “the deeds done in the body.” We sympathize with the friends and relatives of the murderer’s victim; we can understand how naturally their hearts would burn for revenge; but we are free to say that that mad mob of 5,000 men augurs ill for future justice, and is a mighty evidence of the pitiable lack of control among humanity at the present time. Mob law is of the devil; and it matters not what the provocation or who controls such a mass of men, the leader of it all is his satanic majesty. “The good can well afford to wait.” Their case is in the hands of the great eternal God; and tho His mills seem to grind slowly, with exactness they grind all. It seems that the last victim of its madness was a man who was only “suspected” of crime. It had not been proved against him. Supposing he were innocent? Every one of the mob that put him to death and followed their blood lust in doing it, was a murderer.