OFFICERS OF THE LAW, AND CRIMINALS.
By T.
THE evidence is accumulating all the time, showing that the criminal element of the large cities are in league with the officers of the law, and it is about impossible to detect the perpetrators of crime. We have often referred to this fact in these pages, and it is our desire to keep it before our readers, so that they may not be deceived by the popular notion that the world is getting so much better. Things are getting worse, and the evidence is accumulating on every hand that shows it to be so. And not only is this the case, but the Word of God tells us that the world will continue to get worse and worse until the whole land will be literally filled with violence. Another illustration of the corrupt affiliation of criminals and municipal officers is found in the following paragraphs from a recent New York World:— Twelve days have passed since ten-year-old Willie McCormick was kidnapped. And what are the police doing? The answer is, Nothing. Giving out assurances of activity is not action. Reading descriptions of the boy to the policemen at roll-call is not action. Asking the detectives incidentally to “look out on their rounds” is not action. Spinning theories that the boy may have run away is not action. This kidnapping case brings sharply before the eyes of the public the deplorable and dangerous fact of the complete demoralization of the police force. Its rogues are busy protecting vice and crime. Its hard-working members are discouraged by the spectacle of rewards for its rogues, and punishments for those officers and policemen who are guilty of the “overzeal” of trying to do their duty. It is dangerous to make an arrest; the arrested man may have a “pull.” It is dangerous to investigate a mystery; the bottom of the mystery may secrete some heeler or his friend. It is dangerous even faithfully to walk a beat; the policeman may see something, may be compelled to take cognizance of something, that will get him into trouble with the politicians. If so many of the people were not wholly indifferent to the evil that is involved, such things as are described in the foregoing paragraphs could not exist. But the people are allowing such evils to go on unchecked, and the conscience is becoming more and more hardened to them. It is seriously thought by many that such wickedness can not be helped, and that it will have to be tolerated. But what will be the awful results of such a course of wrong-doing? Any one should see that it must sooner or later plunge the whole world into general disaster. The Lord destroyed the old world with a flood, and the cities of the plain by fire. And He says in His Word that when the wickedness of the world again reaches the stage that it did in the times of Noah and Lot, He will visit destruction as He did then. But there will be this difference: In that time there was only a temporary dethronement of evil for an object-lesson to following ages. But in this time sin will have run its course, and the Lord Jesus Christ will come to resurrect the righteous dead, immortalize the righteous living, and forever redeem them from the curse of sin by destroying every vestige of evil, along with all those who persist in sinning. T.