p. 7 | THE ROOT OF ANARCHY by G.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 27, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 48.

THE ROOT OF ANARCHY.

By G.

ANARCHISM had its beginning in disobedience of the law of God, and it has its sustenance in the same principle. No one who believes that to “fear God and keep His commandments” is the “whole duty of man” will ever become an Anarchist. Such an one may be charged with anarchism by those who are themselves real Anarchists, but the charge is false. The men who resist the law of God, and teach that it has been abolished, do more to encourage the spirit of anarchy than any other class. Men who will not refrain from murder, and kindred acts of violence, out of respect to the law of God, will be restrained from violating civil law only through fear of its penalty.

When the inclination to commit crime finds opportunity to do so and evade the penalty, if there be no law of God in the way, there can be no conscientious scruples in the matter. Only the law of God can rule in a “good conscience,” a “conscience void of ‘offense’ toward God.” The Christian obeys the law of the land because it is the command of God for him to do so. He has a higher incentive than he who obeys merely to avoid the penalty. But in his conscientious walk he is not unmindful of the fact that God’s own law takes precedence, and that His Word instructs us to “obey God rather than men.”

There are times when the laws of men are in direct contravention of the law of God. The laws of Babylon and Medo-Persia, which Daniel and Meshach, Shadrach and Abednego violated on certain well-known occasions, were of this character. The traditions of the Jewish elders which Jesus ignored were of the same class, as also the commands of the council, that the apostles should not preach in the name of Jesus of Nazareth. The laws of Rome which made it treason to preach any deity not recognized by the State, were of this character; and so are the Sunday laws of the present day, which command the observance of a so-called sacred day, to the utter disregard of the plain commandment of God.

Those who conscientiously adhere to the Sabbath of the Lord, and refuse to obey the human sabbath laws, are sometimes accused of anarchy, and expect to have to answer to this charge more generally in the near future. But in all conscience we ask, Who is the Anarchist, he who ignores the law of man in deference to the commandment of God, or he who follows the multitude to trust in the arm of flesh? In our day and generation this will be a practical, every-day question, and it will be an individual question, too. G.