"THY SIN SHALL FIND THEE OUT."
By The Woman's Daily
THERE is no law of divine origin or man-made so absolutely immutable as the law of retribution. No words of Holy Writ are more forcibly proven every day and every hour in the day by current events than the words, "Thy sin shall find thee out." The man who transcends the law as set forth on the tablets of stone brought from the mountain top to the children of Israel waiting and worshiping the golden calf in the valley below must surely suffer therefor. Never in the world's history was this brought so closely home to the human race as it is to-day, when the world seems to run mad in the race for wealth. The greed to get and to have—the covetousness that condemns so many to unhappiness through unfulfilled desires—is in itself evidence of the fact that wrong-doing brings punishment. Every day the newspapers are filled with stories of crimes conceived in covetousness; and reading these stories of the doings of men who, too impatient or too avaricious to earn honestly the money that to their misguided minds means happiness, young men all over the land are led into lines of thought that, if indulged, or even tolerated, can only lead to evil. "Why may I not steal a thousand or a hundred thousand dollars?" asks the young man in a position of trust where the door of opportunity seems so invitingly open. "Here is a trusted official on a small salary who has pocketed $50,000; here is a bank teller who spent $25,000 in pursuit of pleasure, and then grabbed as much more and ran away; here is a bank president who managed to get away with millions before even the finger of public suspicion was pointed at him; here are men whose active brains have conceived great schemes for plundering people and pocketing the spoils—grain speculation companies, fraudulent bond and insurance corporations, bogus investment concerns of so wide a variety that the list is almost limitless. All these fellows gather in great wealth without working; why may not I?" Thus argues the fool who toys with temptation. That he is a fool for giving countenance to any such ideas is self-proven when we keep in mind the fact that every one of these revelations of the easy accumulation of money is also a story of the punishment of crime. Just a glance at current history proves this beyond dispute. The young bank teller who rioted away his employer's funds, robbed himself at the same time of family, friends, and home, and was pursued to the far west by a former schoolmate clothed with official authority. The criminal was almost glad to be caught, so miserable had been his lot while a fugitive. The Chicago banker who stole millions was followed beyond the seas and through foreign lands, betrayed by the people who had been associates in his debaucheries, and brought back from remote Morocco to drag out a life of penal servitude in the penitentiary. Of a dozen men recently figuring in notorious get-rich-quick schemes, one escaped prison by dying a raving maniac, three committed suicide to escape a worse penalty; while the rest either went to the penitentiary, or are common tramps and fugitives, tho they handled millions of the people's money only a short while ago. These facts of to-day are illustrative of the truth of all time. "But I should hold on to the money and not get caught," says the young man who is arguing with his better self. So said every one of those fellows who have reaped and are reaping the crop of thorns their covetous dishonesty sowed. They never intended to get caught. They never intended to let go of the money for which they risked so much. But they reckoned without their host. That host is Retribution,—both host and master most exacting and inexorable. No man e'er drank the cup of sin at the devil's table who did not, sooner or later, pay the score.