MOB LAW AND CHRISTIANITY.
Presumably many of the five thousand farmers who are said to have engaged in the pursuit and burning of the doubtless guilty wretch, near the Texas border, August 20, were professed Christians. Presumably this has been the case in all the other trials under Mob Law, and executions by Judge Lynch, which have occurred with such frequency during the last few years. These manifestations of popular frenzy are ominous signs of the times. In the first place mob law is unreasonable and injudicious. It acts from impulse and passion, not from reason. Reason is in bondage to mad, blind hatred, engendered by prejudice. The one whose life is sought is presupposed to be guilty. Sometimes the victim is not even allowed to make a statement. When he is thus allowed, it is that he may confess his guilt. If he declares his innocence, his declaration is taken for nothing. Surely this is not just. In a recent affair of this kind a man’s life was taken whose name even was not learned. It was averred that he was not even guilty of the crime for which he was cruelly slain; but the sympathetic reporter consoled himself and justified the mad mob by declaring that this unknown man was guilty of another murder, and supposed that the mob was pursuing him for that, tho how this could be ascertained in the premises is not indicated. The victim of the mob did not testify; no one bore witness to this effect, and no identity was established. It is better reason, it is more humane, to let ten guilty go free than to slay one innocent person. In the second place, mob law is unchristian. Christianity rests upon the existence of an eternal God, possessed of infinite knowledge, wisdom, justice, power, and love. He knows the guilt as measured by the crime, and its degree as measured by the inherited tendencies, the intelligence, and the environments of the evil-doer. He knows the punishment due. His Word declares that “we shall all ‘stand before the judgment seat of Christ;” that “every one of us shall give account of himself to ‘God;” “that every one may receive the things ‘done in his body, according to that he hath done, ‘whether it be good or bad;” and that Christ is coming again “to execute judgment upon all, and to ‘convince all that are ungodly among them of all ‘their ungodly deeds, which they have ungodly committed.” In that great day it will be seen that many of those who shouted in the mad mobs for vengeance on oftentimes prejudged criminals, will in the all-piercing light from the throne of God be seen to be more guilty than their victims here. In the providence of God we have civil government, ordained for the purpose of suppressing incivility. Its object is not vengeance, but the protection of the lives, the chastity, the property, the reputation of all. Its whole purpose is for the protection of all, equal justice to all, the suppression of all incivility. But Mob Law and Judge Lynch are moved by the unchristian motives of revenge and hatred. Surely those who thus yield to impulse have no faith in God. He has said: “Vengeance is Mine; I will ‘repay.” Can not He be believed? What if His time seems long? It is not the less sure. Why should poor fallible man, who must sue for mercy at the Throne of Divine Justice, take vengeance on an evil-doer? Why should he not leave it to Him who is all-wise and infinitely just; who never forgets, and who can never fail? Furthermore, the Just One has said: “Judge not, ‘that ye be not judged; for with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ‘ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.’” Are you prepared to face God with the unreasonable, unmerciful, unchristian, judgment which you thus render resting upon you? A sad lesson pointed out in these many mad mobs is that men, measured sometimes by the majorities of large communities, are losing faith in God, or else have never possessed it. Jesus implied all this in His question: “When the Son of man cometh, shall ‘He find faith in the earth?’”