ON THE FLOOD TIDE by S.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 9, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 41.

ON THE FLOOD TIDE.

By S.

THE Outlook of September 7, in referring to the large number of recent lynchings, in many of which the victims have been burned at the stake, declares that we are in the midst of an “epidemic of savagery.” We have hitherto read with horror the accounts of Indian savagery, in which burning at the stake was the portion of the white captive; and we have fondly contrasted our own civilization with such atrocious deeds to show how the race was forging ahead, how we had outgrown the instincts of the barbarous races. “To-day,” says the Outlook, “the communities where these ‘horrors occur preserve as mementoes the evidences ‘of their savagery, and newspapers all over the ‘country treat the details as a sensation, and not as ‘a disgrace.’”

This epidemic of lynching in its most terrible form is not restricted to the South. It is a disease that is spreading persistently and with rapid strides into localities where formerly it had been looked upon with distress and shame.

The journal above quoted finds what it considers a hopeful feature of the present distressing situation in the fact that clear-sighted men in the localities where lynchings are most frequent have come to realize that the terrible vengeance of the lynchers does not tend to reduce the number of the shameful crimes committed; but where lynchings have been most numerous, such crimes have increased. Newspapers in those sections have begun to work against the lynching sentiment. While newspapers and clear-sighted men recognize that lynchings increase crime by brutalizing the participants and spectators, we are not in a position to predict, on this account, the staying of that rising tide. This is not because we refuse to see hope where there is hope; but because the whole tendency of the times is against it. More and more frequently we hear the expression, “The one ‘who did that act deserves lynching;” or, “Lynching ‘is too good for him.” Recently a minister of the Gospel declared from the pulpit, while speaking of the assassination of President McKinley, that this affair had almost converted him into an advocate of lynch law. When the discourse was finished, the pastor stepped down from the pulpit, and stated to members of his congregation that if he had been there with a pistol, he would have “blown the ‘scoundrel to atoms.”

These remarks only show how the people are imbibing the lynching spirit, how insistent is that spirit in gaining control over the feelings of the populace. The feeling of horror for the crime turns into revengeful wrath for the perpetrator of the crime; and with vengeance in the saddle, passion is spurred on to a red crime against the criminal and the law; respect for the law is flung to the winds—the law is too tame to satisfy the fiery appetite—and the savage dominates and gloats in the lurid expiation. Community after community has denounced lynching, only to resort to it itself when some heinous crime has been committed against one of its members. It is the crime that “touches us” that stirs up the lynching fever, and puts into the heart of the members of any locality the spirit to “take the law into ‘their own hands,’ or rather to take the breaking of it into their own hands. The great number of such acts that have occurred within the last year, shows a general disintegration of respect for law among the masses. They show also the fearful fact that the people in general do not now look upon such deeds with the measure of horror they did a few years ago. The Nashville American says, “The thoughtful must ‘shudder as they contemplate this downward drift;’” and then asks, “Where will it end?” The San Francisco Chronicle (usually conservative) of September 9, in an editorial dealing with the exultations of anarchists over the shooting of the president, declares that such anarchists should be “rounded up ‘by the police;” but that “if there is no law to ‘accomplish this, then some amateur reformers ‘should see to it that such foul utterances are ‘checked’”—a plain intimation that a mob should take the matter into its hands without regard to law. Thus is instilled into the populace the spirit of the mob and the lynching bee, and the tide is setting strongly toward the shore.

As has been pointed out in these columns again and again, this is one of the indications of the approaching end—a time when the spirits of devils were to work their wonders in the earth, stirring up strife, contention of every kind, wickedness of every kind, jealousy, hatred, and war. We can not fail to recognize the time; for on the great clock of history the hands are pointing to the hour of strife. In such a time as this the Christian must be sober, vigilant, and watch unto prayer. He must be “swift to hear, ‘slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man ‘worketh not the righteousness of God.’” James 1: 19, 20. S.