p. 286 | The Underlying Cause

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · May 2, 1916

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 43, No. 18.

The Underlying Cause

SENATOR JOSEPH T. ROBINSON has introduced a bill in the United States Senate for the purpose of having established in the Department of Justice “a bureau for the study of the abnormal classes.” These abnormal classes are the criminals, the paupers, and the defectives. The Hon. Joseph Taggart has introduced the same bill in the House. This bill is designed to provide for the employment of professional experts by the government to investigate the causes that are producing, in such increasing numbers, these classes of individuals.

Such investigations would discover, without doubt, many of the physical causes for these undesirable classes; and the information thus obtained would cause serious reflections on the part of many thoughtful people, which would result in much good.

But lying back of these physical considerations is one cause which must not be overlooked, and that is sin itself. The trouble with the human race is that it is drowning itself beneath a flood of all kinds of vices and sinful indulgences, and this is producing criminals, paupers, lunatics, and all classes of defectives, in appalling numbers. The progress in medical science helps to keep these defectives alive longer than they ordinarily

would live, and thus they reproduce their kind.

But sin—just plain sin—is the one underlying cause of it all. “The curse causeless shall not come.”