FORETOKENS OF OUR LORD'S RETURN
By George W. Rine
CRIME; OR, THE REIGN OF LAWLESSNESS.
DURING the last twenty years there have been more than 3,000 lynchings in the United States; and the most of them were executed in a spirit of brutality and savagery seldom paralleled even among barbarous tribes. In each of these atrocities law and government were thrown to the winds, while thousands connived with the murderous mobs and either openly or tacitly approved these anarchistic killings. In truth, entire communities have sympathetically acquiesced in these hellish tragedies; and not infrequently men of the highest intelligence and of presumable integrity have not only excused, but even defended, the bloodthirsty rabbles who committed these wholesale outrages against law, justice, and decency. Does this fact not prove that the spirit of lawlessness practically dominates the human heart to-day, that contempt for law is in the very air, in these turbulent, crucial days? Mr. Ray Stannard Baker has said, with great aptness:
> Lynching is not so much a disease in itself as it is the symptom of a disease. It is a symptom of lawlessness, of the failure of justice, of political corruption. It is an attempt of nature to throw off disease—as she sometimes throws off the humors of the blood in the human body—by violent eruptions. And this disease—the failure of law—is not essentially a Southern disease, tho it is complicated and emphasized there by an ignorant, inferior, defenseless, often criminal, negro population. No Southern manifestation of mob-law has equaled in downright anarchy the conditions in Colorado last year. In the North, as our negro population increases—and it is increasing rapidly—we shall lynch negroes with the same utter brutality that we find in the South; we have done it already, and repeatedly, in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kansas, Delaware, and in other Northern states. No Southern lynching was ever more barbarous than that of Wilmington, Delaware. Mr. Baker has called attention to the fact that a town in which a lynching has been perpetrated nearly always has a previous bad record of homicide. Between January 1, 1902, and March 7, 1904, the city of Springfield, Ohio, where a negro was murdered by a mob on the latter date, had the unenviable record of ten murders committed within its limits. The Daily Sun of Springfield, in referring to this orgy of man-killing, asks editorially, "What are you going to do about it?" Its own answer is, "Nothing." The morning following the lynching, the same paper printed in its headlines,—
Awful Rebuke to the Courts. They Have Temporized with the Criminal Classes until Patience Was Exhausted. How clearly these facts show that the courts themselves are essentially lawless. By their failure to apply and enforce the laws, the courts become substantially law-breakers, and therefore criminally culpable. Prof. E. S. Todd recently alleged that in Springfield, the chief fault of the municipal government has been, and is, the laxity and discrimination in the enforcement of the law. Many of the municipal ordinances have been shelved for years. "A sort of dry rot, a moral paralysis," says Mr. Baker, "seems to strike the administration of law in a town like Springfield. What can be expected of officers who are not accustomed to enforce the law, or of people not accustomed to obey it—or who make reservations and exceptions when they do enforce it or obey it?" When the sheriff appealed to the Springfield mob, urging them to let the law take its course, they vociferously jeered him. The man who joins a lynching mob forgets that by his very act he puts himself on the same plane of criminal guilt as is the intended victim, for both have abandoned themselves wholly to brute passion—the one to that of lust, the other to that of blind rage. Through the great magazines the public have been informed again and again, by those who make a specialty of sociological subjects, that there are places in all our large cities where boys are trained to become professional thieves, where girls in their teens are taught to beg and steal, and where men and women are voluntarily maimed and crippled in order to appeal to the sympathies of the people and thus make begging more profitable. Everywhere law-makers and other law officers sell themselves to become law-breakers. It is admitted that in all cities and large towns, the police levy blackmail on dives and other illegal hot-beds of reeking, festering vice and corruption. In fact, the New York Sun says epigrammatically: "There are as many crooks on the police force as there are off it." But I dare not specify any further. It is demonstrated that throughout the whole body social—in high places as well as in low places—crime, which means lawlessness, percolates. Yes, society is honeycombed, positively perforated, with law-breaking. The truth of this serious charge is verified by unimpeachable testimony from thousands of the most trustworthy sources. It has become notoriously patent that a very large proportion of public officials connive at wrong-doing, for illicit gain, thus making themselves doubly criminal. Can a body of policemen and other public officials engaged in criminal practises prevent others from committing crime? "Can a board of aldermen," asks Mr. S. S. McClure, "who for private gain combine to loot a city, govern a city well?" "Political pull" is responsible for a vast catalog of crimes. It protects the dive-keeper, hampers the administration of justice, secures ridiculously light sentences and unwarranted pardons, puts into public offices persons notoriously inefficient, and makes public office a private privilege. Again, the people are apathetically indifferent. They do not insist that the laws be enforced. They are not on the alert to preserve order and maintain justice. In other words, the great body of the people are not scrupulously law-respecting and law-abiding. They are willing to elect rascals to office if only the rascals are "good fellows." They are in love with "good politicians" rather than "good officers." The Bible student will recall the significant fact that in the time immediately preceding the Deluge, Jehovah Himself testified that the earth was "FILLED WITH VIOLENCE," Gen. 6:13. That fact was one of the several reasons for which God declared that He would destroy the earth with a flood. Because of their love of lawlessness and consequent unbelief, the people "knew not until the Flood came, and took them all away; SO SHALL ALSO THE COMING OF THE SON OF MAN BE." Matt. 24:39. This is the express, unqualified declaration of our Lord. Do not the quotations given above from various publicists as to the present reign of crime, again and again refer to present-day crimes as "crimes of violence"? No word seems to come to the tongue of public reformers to-day more frequently than that of "violence." Violence, violence, the earth is again "filled with violence." "And as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of Man." Luke 17:26. It is well known that the greater part of the matter covered by Matthew 24, comprises our Lord's own prophecy respecting His second advent. Now note His prediction concerning the prevalence of lawlessness at the time when the Gospel "shall be preached in all the world" as a preparation for His second coming. "And because INIQUITY SHALL ABOUND, the love of many shall wax cold." Matt. 24:12, compare with verse 14. The word "iniquity" literally means "lawlessness." Hence Jesus' statement may be paraphrased thus: "And because lawlessness shall abound," etc. Now, take this statement with the one in Genesis 6, and observe how conclusively they point to the solemn fact that we are living in the very days referred to by the Saviour as being similar to the days of Noah. Has it not been shown repeatedly in previous articles that, like the Antediluvians, society is to-day absorbed in "eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage"? "So shall also the coming of the Son of Man be." Lawlessness shall abound, shall be multiplied (A. R. V.), declared Jesus. Does not lawlessness abound to-day, dear reader? Are crimes not multiplied now as they were in Noah's age? At this very time, when lawlessness is multiplied, our Master commands us to "Watch therefore; for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come." Matt. 24:42. "Therefore be ye also ready; for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh." Verse 44. "Blessed is that servant." Verse 46.