p. 38 | Crime | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 26, 1882

Crime.

THE great increase of crime may well excite serious apprehension in the mind of every lover of his country. Gambling is rapidly becoming a national vice. Colleges have their boat clubs, towns and cities their base ball clubs for gambling purposes. Millions of dollars of railroad, mining, and other stocks, are sold by men who do not own what they sell, to men who do not expect to own what they buy. Even grain, that feeds the people, is bought and sold in the same way. A. buys of B. a million of bushels of wheat to be delivered at the end of thirty days at a certain price. If, when the time is up, wheat is higher than it was when the sale was made, B. pays the difference on the quantity sold. If it is lower A. pays the difference. It simply amounts to a bet between the parties that wheat will be at a certain price on a certain day. It is gambling and nothing else. This is carried on, to an extent little dreamed of, by men living in all parts of the land. This leads to false reports in the papers in regard to everything that has a tendency to influence the market. To cover up losses, recourse is had to embezzlements, thefts, and forgeries. The conscience is silenced by the plea that the money so taken will be returned as soon as possible. The government is robbed, business houses are robbed, widows and orphans are robbed—sometimes openly and sometimes under the cover of judicial proceedings.

Murders for the most trivial causes are becoming common. The New York Graphic says: “In the shooting line the wild West pales before the East. For in shooting, New York now rivals Leadville.” The Fenians, for the purpose of crippling England, openly threatened to blow up English steamships even though engaged in the American trade and loaded with American passengers.

What is the cause of this general demoralization? For years back we have been accustomed to attribute it to the war. There is no doubt but that war is an enemy to morality and religion. But we have had peace for a sufficient length of time for the nation to recover its moral tone. But there are no indications of a growth of virtue among the people. We think the causes of the prevalence of crimes are mainly these:—

1. The growing prevalence of infidel sentiments. Experience has demonstrated that human laws, whatever their penalties, are weak unless they are supported by the sanctions of religion. The experiment of governing a state on atheistic principles was tried a half-century ago in France. Under the teachings of the assumed philosophers of the day, the Sabbath was formally repealed, the Bible discarded and Christianity abolished. The worship of reason was inaugurated. Those in authority beheaded, under the forms of law, thousands of their co-patriots because their political sentiments differed a little from their own. The streets of Paris flowed with blood.

Our government is a government by the people. Yet within a few years two of our best and most popular Presidents have been stricken down by the assassin’s hand. Our government cannot stand upon an infidel foundation. Atheistic sentiments are sapping the very foundation of society.

The New York Evening Post says: “A careful survey of the murders, suicides, and other great felonies committed in the chief cities of the United States during the last ten years, shows that a heavy fraction of the perpetrators were atheists and free thinkers. These unhappy persons, persuaded that life is the be-all and end-all here, imagine that they can jump the life to come. A collection of letters and other papers often left by criminals, when anticipating death, shows a fearful number of instances, some of which many readers will recall, of absolute disbelief in the existence of a God, or in penalties for sins committed in this life to be exacted in the future one.”

The Hon. George R. Wendling in his lecture on Robert Ingersoll, says: “The most notorious outlaw known in the criminal annals of the West, Frank Rande, stood a few months ago, at the bar of his cell in St. Louis, the very impersonation of every crime, and with the air of a braggart, said to preachers, priests, and policemen, to throngs of men and women, ‘I am a Bob Ingersoll man’—and every man and woman in the land believed him.”

2. Another cause of the tendency to crime is the making of salvation so easy by the popular churches and revivalists of the day. Repentance, restitution, confession, turning from popular sins, is not insisted on. Multitudes join the church without any Christian experience. They profess to be saved without meeting the conditions of salvation. Many who are starting upon a career of crime are encouraged to go on, with the hope that before they die they can “come to Jesus,” without humbling themselves and making wrongs right, and be saved. The popular, unscriptural theology is doing immense harm. We need revivals; but most of all a revival of righteousness.

—B. T. Roberts, in Earnest Christian.