p. 16 | What Worse?

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 1, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 13.

What Worse?

What Worse?—Well, the big fight between the two great bruisers of the day is over, and there is but one “champion of the world.” All sorts of condemnation has been lavished unsparingly upon Governor Sadler, but we do not see that he is more to be blamed than the thousand business men, bankers, merchants, lawyers, judges, physicians, writers, etc., who congregated from hundreds and thousands of miles away at the ring-side. The prize-fight is only one of the manifest tendencies to brutalism so increasingly common in these days. What worse is it than the great slugging games of football? What worse is it than the “boys’ brigades” in various churches, where the spirit of war and murder is instilled in the minds of the youth by the professed ministers of the “Prince of Peace”? What worse is it than the cry of war we hear from united Christendom against those they esteem their enemies? We are not condemning these things, neither are we condemning Corbett or Fitzsimmons, nor the fight promoters or patrons. Their judgment lies with God. They are but doing “the works of the flesh” (Gal. 5: 19-21), and they that sow to the flesh “shall of the flesh reap corruption” (Gal. 6: 8). But it is just as much the works of the flesh when manifest in brutal football games, college hazing, boys’ brigades, or armed crusades against the Turks, as it is in prize-fighting. We are living the life of declining Rome over again. We have the gladiators, the mad mobs of spectators, made frantic by the sight of blood, and all the other forms of brutalism common to that pagan age. But it is not of Christ. He is a messenger of peace. His servants fight battles, but it is in the realm of thought and passion and imagination. Their victories are not in defeating men. They win men, but defeat evil. We are aware that this is not popular, but is it not Biblical?