Sowing and Reaping

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 25, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 21.

Sowing and Reaping

The Denver Times of May 10 gives an account of the adjournment at the opening of the May term of the Colorado district court by Judge Stevens. He declared that the presence of the military on his arrival was an insult to civil authority, while the military declared that the judge brought with him a dozen or so of the deported agitators. There seems to be but little question, as Ray Stannard Baker has shown, that the military has far transcended its proper function; and it seems to be equally patent that their actions were provoked by the utter powerlessness or perversity of the civil power to preserve law and order. A correspondent well states our own conclusions from the Colorado object-lesson:—

The worst part of the whole thing is the apparent indifference of nearly all to these things. Their whole heart is wrapped up in the things of this life, yet they fail to realize that the things they so lust after all depend on the law and order they must be able to preserve among themselves. The foundation of the present civilization is based on the confidence people have in one another. When once that is destroyed, the utmost anarchy and misery will result; all the evil passions will be turned loose. The unredressed wrongs of the human heart will be avenged by such violence as the world has never seen before. What will drag down one city and community will quickly infect and drag down another, and spread from nation to nation, for we are all one (worldly speaking), and anarchy once started, with the restraining hand of God removed, will spread with the speed of electricity.

Yours faithfully, Villa Grove, Colo. J. N. PARSONS.