Society Frightened at Its Own Crimes.
The Washington correspondent of the Interior, of Chicago, sends to that paper, under date of Aug. 12, 1870, the following description of the present startling condition of society: For the present, the church is relieved from the task of reminding society of its sins. The world has become its own accuser. As the leper of old uttered the sad warning, “Unclean,” so New York is startled at the loathsomeness of her moral leprosy, and utters a cry of disgust and horror. The echo of this cry all over the land shows that there is wide-spread alarm at the present condition of things. The leading secular papers describe the prevailing wickedness and the impunity of crime, in terms so strong and so decided as to satisfy the most earnest believers in human depravity. The orthodox preacher would give great offense to many, if he should use similar terms in describing the sinfulness of men. We are told that the question now is not alone whether our property, our homes, our lives, can any longer be defended from the thief, the robber, the assassin, or any other form of villainy, but whether civilization itself can endure. Perhaps we shall believe that this is not putting the case too strongly, if we consider how nearly every day brings to us the knowledge of some new form of iniquity, till we are so familiarized with crime that it requires some most unusually shocking and brutal outrage to excite any attention. There seems to be a superhuman ingenuity of wickedness in the newly-invented forms of sin, as if we had entered upon that period of Satanic manifestations which the Saviour said would occur in the last days. It is not simply the increase of common crimes which is most alarming, though that is fearful; but the deliberate violation of the most solemn trusts by men whose integrity had been undoubted, the abuse of official position, the misuse of public funds, the peculations and cheatings in all departments of business, the mutual gigantic robberies in the great monied operations of the country, the brutality of outrage which would seem to indicate the incarnation of unclean devils among us, the insult offered to God by slaying men as if they were dogs, and the impunity with which such crimes are committed—these are the startling features of the case. Inasmuch as we have not reached our present condition without adequate causes, and as these causes must be wide spread and general in their operations, it behooves frightened society to seek these causes out. While human nature remains as it now is, crimes will increase in proportion as the fear of punishment is removed, and men lose their consciousness of the guilt of sin, and the seared conscience will feel little or no guilt, and punishment will not be demanded when men are taught to undervalue law and its penalty. If, then, we can discover the means by which the people have been taught to think slightly of the majesty of law and the necessity of penalty, shall we not find the main cause of the loosening on all sides of the moral bonds of society? The war was doubtless in this respect a teacher of evil. Great wars bring with them great necessities. The fixed order and observances of society are interrupted, the rights of property are disregarded, life becomes cheap, crime must be winked at, laws, and even constitutions, yield to the real or supposed exigencies of the hour, and legal restraints give way to private will. The evil fruit of this remains, and ripens sometimes after the war is over. The almost general jail delivery occasioned by executive clemency, deadened the moral sensibility of our people still more, and made less clear the distinction between right and wrong. Then came the demoralizing effect of the refusal to punish treason. It was a virtual declaration that the most sacred law of earth, that which guards the life of a nation, is worthy of no respect, and that the highest crime known to human law, treason against properly-constituted government, is not worthy of punishment. And when the majesty of the highest law is thus disregarded and insulted, and the highest crime escapes without rebuke, does not this necessarily beget contempt for all law, and encourage men to commit all lesser crimes? False theories in regard to the nature and objects of punishment, and the efforts made to abolish capital punishment for murder, have also done much to lessen men’s respect for law and penalty. If we abandon the idea that the primary object of punishment is satisfaction for violated law, an avenging of public justice, we transfer our sympathy to the criminal, and it is apt to become such a sympathy as lessens our horror of crime, and our respect for the law. And what shall be said of that somewhat indefinite thing called “Liberal Christianity,” embracing so many phases of belief as scarcely to admit of definition, and yet having one distinguishing feature, an aversion to law and penalty, a rejection of belief in the wrath of God, as presented in our orthodox standards. The theory which strikes out future punishment, that which most appalls the soul, or modifies it according to human conceptions instead of accepting the statement of the word of God, removes the moral restraints imposed by reverence for law and its penalty; and equally so does that theology which denies the sacrificial character of the Saviour’s death, by declaring that sin is not worthy of death, and the broken law of God demands no vindication. And must not the same be said of that allied system of liberal preaching which, while it admits, in words, the doctrine of law and wrath against sin, and punishment, so overshadows them with the love of God, as to produce nearly the same effect upon the hearers as if they were wholly denied. God is love; God in Christ is love supreme and infinite; but the very first step in the manifestation of that love was the death of the Son, both to show the sinfulness of sin, the wrath of an infinitely holy Being against it, and the necessity of vindicating his law. That, surely, is an unscriptural view of God’s love, which shows it as a mere regard for the individual, separate from his higher love for the universe, which he is bound, as Creator and Governor, to protect by his law. May it not be found in the end, and on the broad scale, that the teachings of liberal Christianity, by lessening respect for law and penalty, and deadening the conscience to a sense of sin, tend to produce the very condition of society which so alarms us now! If so, the world may awake at length to the importance of an orthodox faith.