"THREE RUNAWAY BOYS IN THE POTRERO ARRESTED ON A CHARGE OF BURGLARY."
By T.
UNDER the above heading there appeared the following picture in a recent daily paper.
Concerning these runaway boys the paper, among other things, said, "The small boy is becoming quite a factor in crime, and recently he has been accused of train-wrecking, burglary, and other offenses of a like character."
What are your reflections as you look upon the pictures of such little boys as those given in the foregoing cut, and think that they are confirmed criminals at such a tender age? And what are your further reflections when you consider that it is a very common thing to read of daring and vicious crimes committed by mere children? There are those who tell us that the world is growing better all the time, but where is the evidence of it? With the rising generation so full of vice and criminality that the little boys, and the little girls as well, are given to the work of daring desperadoes and border ruffians, what, and what alone, can the immediate future bring forth? The Bible plainly says that evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, and any one who has his eyes open to the situation must see that the Bible tells the true story.
The seed has been sown. The children of this age have had their minds filled with pernicious stories about robbers and criminals of all classes, in which the outlaw is made to appear as a sort of hero. And with many of these children such stories as fill the vilest and trashiest literature that could be invented, are all that they know anything about. When they are but little more than mere babies, they are taught to steal, either by their companions on the street, or, as is often the case, by their own parents, and how could we expect them to be anything else but desperate characters when they grow up?
All of our cities are filled with these criminally vile children. And the children can not be said to be to blame. They have never come in contact with anything else. And it is altogether too true that the professed Christian people are so taken up with the cares of this life and its follies and pleasures that they do not even know of this appalling evil that exists right at their doors. And while they are saying, "Peace and safety," and that the world is growing better all the time, there is a generation coming up around them that will soon join in filling the world with the most horrible terrors of the most abandoned violence.
These vile and criminal children are objects of pity. They need our help. They do not need to be sent to penal institutions, but they need to be gathered into Christian homes, and Christian people need to go among them to teach them the pure and the good. Hundreds of them can be saved from ruin if the proper efforts are put forth in their behalf.
This is no time for the Christian professor to be dreaming of peace and a good time in this life. The dark shadows of the most terrible time the world has ever known are now to be seen about us. And there is earnest work to be done to save as many as possible from the wreck into which this world has been driven by its course in sin. T.
