The Law Is Slacked by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Dec 8, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 48.

“The Law Is Slacked.”

By Editor

There is a noted murder case on in California at present writing in which a poor betrayed girl shot her betrayer. Very much is said, in connection with the trial of the case, about the holiness and sacredness of law, and among the foremost spokesmen are professed ministers of the Gospel. One after another has spoken upon that, and declared that the law should take its course, that we can not afford to trifle with law; and similar expressions are used regarding the necessity of upholding the sacredness of the law. All of this sounds very good; and yet it would be worth very much more if the same ministers would apply the same logic and demand the same allegiance to the upholding of God’s eternal law. One of the reasons why we see crime so manifest at the present time is, according to the words of the prophet, “The law is slacked,” that is, God’s law. Some of these very ministers who are pleading for human law to enforce this or that, to sustain this kind or that kind of morality, have very little to say regarding the sacredness of God’s law of Ten Commandments. They are willing to admit that man has power to change the law of the Eternal, but one must not tamper with the law of the state. We wish emphatically not to be understood as being in sympathy with lawlessness. We pity the poor victim who is dead, and we pity the living victim; but we believe in our soul—and we are confirmed in that belief by Scripture—that if the Christian ministry were zealous as ministers should be in the upholding of the sacredness of God’s unchangeable law, there would be very much less crime. If men can wantonly trample under foot one of God’s commandments, if those who profess His name can practically obliterate one of the eternal words of the Decalogue and place a man-made substitute in its stead, why should such effort be made to plead human law against the half-insane act of an ignorant girl? These are things for Christians to think about. We would like to suggest the reading of the 50th Psalm, especially the latter part.