IT is a saying of Holy Writ that among those who profess Christianity in the "last days" "evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived." Read from the first verse to the thirteenth in the third chapter of 2 Timothy. Compare the first five verses with the last part of the first chapter of Romans, where the apostle is giving us a picture of the heathen world. Note that the same sins which were prevalent in the heathen world in the days of the apostle will be manifest in the professed Christian world in the last days, among those that have the form of godliness but deny the power of it in their lives. Revelation after revelation has been given to the public for years of the awful wickedness and corruption which exist in our great municipalities.
These revelations began with that of the Tweed regime in New York City. There was moral strength enough then back of Samuel J. Tilden and those who prosecuted the evil-doers to have its effect. Of late the moral strength seems to be almost utterly lacking. Following New York have been exposures of corruption in Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Pittsburg, and last of all and worst of all in poor, pitiful, stricken, earthquake-broken, and fire-devastated San Francisco. Of all cities it would seem that in the city by the Golden Gate every element of patriotism, sympathy, and strength of character on the part of its officials and leading men would have been given to lifting the city from its deplorable condition and helping in every way to establish its government, its commerce, its reputation; but if we are to believe what seems to be fact as it is told by the newspapers of all shades of politics, the whole city government, with a very few exceptions,—one journal tells us with but one exception; namely, the district attorney,—is utterly corrupt. Franchises were carried thru by wholesale bribery of the city boss and his underlings, the mayor and city council. One company, it is said, paid $500,000 for a franchise, $200,000 to the mayor, $200,000 to the boss, and the rest divided among the supervisors. And this is only one of a long list of lesser franchises, in which the individual bribes range from $500 up to $5,000. The district attorney and his assistants and some of the judges are doing the best they can to prosecute the evil-doers and punish them for the crime; and yet, there are, seemingly, judges who will bar the way to the execution of justice.
We are told that these men, when they knew that they were found out, came before the grand jury and unblushingly and unmoved told of the bribes which they have given or received, as tho it were an everyday commercial transaction. A few of the people are indignant, but the majority of them laugh it off. The saddest thing in the contemplation of it all is not so much the fact that such a crime as that could be conceived and carried thru, but there seems to be no conscience of crime, no shame on the part of the evil-doers, nor on the part of those who have supported their policy in the past. For instance, one of the supervisors is reported to have said that he had nothing to do with the giving or taking of bribes, but that if he had he would not go back on a friend, meaning that if he had known that the supervisors were guilty of just such things as have been revealed, he would not have brought them to justice, but would have concealed their crimes, notwithstanding his oath of office.
Surely, these things show that we are, in the words of Holy Writ, in "the last days," that the "perilous times" have come, and that these perilous times are not perilous because of the increasing violence, merely, that there is in the land, but perilous because these things can exist among those who profess better things, and constantly increase with so little effect upon the conscience of the public. Most of these men are professed Christians. They were honored by the suffrages of their constituents, because it was believed that they were honest men. The result is before us. The great question which even secular papers are asking is if there is conscience enough in the people who placed these men in office to select other men to take their places, who are not of the same order. All these things ought to stir thinking men and women. It ought to make them see and believe that God's word is preeminently true, and the thing which ought to be heeded above all things else is the "more sure word of prophecy," which throws the true light upon the dark places of the world at the present time.
Greater calamity than the earthquake and the fire is the corruption of San Francisco's officials.
