True in Part

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 21, 1903

True in Part.—Dr. Goss, in the Sunday School Times, makes the following comment on “made their feet fast in the stocks” (Acts 16:24):—

Whatever other mistake you make, do not be guilty of the antiquated blunder that you can restrain or extinguish an idea by imprisoning its exponent, and fastening his feet in the stocks. It is like trying to destroy a perfume by treading on a rose, or the juice of the grape by squeezing it in a wine-press. Ideas escape out of the brain like doves out of windows. They passed through prison doors as Jesus entered that room where His disciples were assembled. Nothing can destroy ideas but other ideas. Men ought to be imprisoned for breaking laws, but not with any hope of suppressing their opinions.

And all this is emphatically true, with the exception of the last sentence; but that sentence would justify almost every religious persecution of the past; for when were men ever prosecuted or persecuted but for the one reason, on the part of officials, that they were breaking some law? The three Hebrew children broke a law; did Nebuchadnezzar do right when he cast them into the furnace of fire? He did not seek by that to change their ideas, but to exact submission to his law. Did Darius do right when he cast Daniel into the den of lions because he would not obey the law? And what about the answers of the apostles in Acts 4:19 and 5:29? Men may argue it their duty to execute unrighteous laws; but sometime they will as truly have to give an account to God of their stewardship as the man they imprisoned.