The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1903-08-24

j. CUMMING SMITH THINKS TINE
HAS COME TO CHECK 1T.
Eloquent Minister Declares 'sThe Pub
lie Conscience Has Taken an Opiate
to Deaden It's Sensations.-

through our country. We make laws and
then break them at will. The public con-
science has taken opiates to deaden its sem
sations," said the Rev. J. Cumming Smith,
ut the Tabernacle Presbyterian Church
yesterday morning in his sermon on 1.-The
Essence of Error" He said I'm part:
" He that shall keep the whole law and
yet offend In one point is guilty of all. This
statement carried out logically from its APP
parent meaning would level the greatest
with the smallest offenders, the boy who
leases the pet kitten with the savage Turk
who fortunes the innocent
Before any court the criminal i'm many
lines Is blacker culprit than the novice
AT whose door perhaps only one trivial
preach OF law may be laid. The statement
or James must therefore be more carefully
construed than to shelter or palliate any viii
lany.
James is simply digging down to the
roots or action. Beneath the countless
forms or open outbreaks of vice. he is like
an expert surgeon with the lancet in hand
prooing the secret depth of the organism
In search of the radical disease out of which
all the mischief and meanness grow upon
the surface He touches the heart and we
vince. He reveals the spirit of lawlessness,
the very quintessence OF the hundred grave
misdemeanors of the police court This is
the analysis of James, the man who goes to
the bottom of things.
faint OF REBELLION.
Nothing escapes his close and remorse-
less investigation. man who, in the
depth OF the heart. carries the essential
faint Of rebellion to the law may defy 1t in
open action at one point or at score, but
he remains covertly and incontrovertibly
the heinous sinner all the way through.
Every sin, therefore, down to this
root. The man who steals a woman's dia-
monds and the other man who artfully robs
the sad widow of a part of her estate by
polite process litigation have at heart the
same pitilessness for a solitary woman in
her hour of bitterness
Crime. therefore, runs to specialties. just
as holiness ripens into many manifesto
tions. Some shrink from vaulting over the
fences and thieving farmers orchard who
would not be shocked at the attempt to
blackmail wound the clear honor of a
neighbor And vice versa Human courts
must. therefore, classify these subtle Of
| lenses and affix penalties to match them.
But the supreme court of religious purity
must pierce through the very crust or cur
| tain which we, in our legal fallibiity and
ignorance, allow, and God pushes through
| to the motive.
''In sense the match that lights the
genial hearth to warm your room is the
| same sort of match which, when flung into
magazine of powder wrecks your streets.
| If a boy reveals some deep depravity or
| treachery of nature, then that very bias,
wherever he got IL, may be flung into such
| circumstances as to develop to astonishing
proportions. and be equal to the most hor-
| ribe outburst of passion in the accomplished
| lawbreaker. These weeds grow just as
/ surely as roses or apple trees grow. Our
| duty is not so much to scourge TO cure
| the evil in its bud. before ii assumes fear
| full size. Let us take one public example.
Our newspapers are crowded just now with
| admirable denunciation of the riotous spirit
| that is abroad-the mania of misrue and
demagogic appeals which so to such hide
| Gus extremes as thwarting our legal courts
| and hanging or burning poor wretches with
| out a chance to shield themselves. Learned,
| judges are wrestling with the problem of
| the ugly epidemic of lawlessness.
GOVERNMENT AND INDIVIDUAL
THE pulpit is apostate If it does not re-
| echo the wisdom of our supreme courts
and the verdict of our true citizens on this
! point. We either a government not
government. The distinction between the
| two is law. If not government the indi-
vidual is supreme and might becomes right
and at one Jump we are back in the
| jungle. If a government, we are under
laws. If our courts are slow or lenient it is
| the duty of the sovereign people who
| created courts to bring them to time. but
| never to scandalize them by winking at
| the lyncher. If the Infatuated mob becomes
frenzy.
but lynching and riots are but mani
| festations of some deeper malignancy, just
| as the flames which struggle through the
| are but manifestations of deep central
| fire somewhere. What is it? 1t is the burst
of lawlessness now spreading through our
| country. We make laws and then break
| them at will. The public conscience has
/ taken Opiates to deaden it's sensations. A
! public man debauches his office and smiles
| at every promise before election and con-
| spires with the worst classes to win their
| votes and then the public stands off i'm
| helpless wrath. foaming at the lips almost
| i'm its impotency, mourning the municipal
| impudence and yet content with mourning.
Wearing crepe never drives out evils!
ETERNAL VIGILANCE.
America has glorious future and will
ride i'm triumph over these difficulties, only
by watching her own deeper life. She is
| too strong for every enemy-except herself.
The soldier may lay low every foe, but If
| he determines to sheathe the sword i'm his
own body who can check his arm of self
destruction. The only menace to our glori-
Gus land Is the deep-seted disregard OF
promise and oaths. the laxity of conscience
| which Is manifestly the corruption at the
base of things which breeds every species
| of anarchy. III labor unions plumber and
| pillage, their crime is CHASTITY enough and
receives public rebuke. But when capital
defies the law in subtle occult fashion-and
| what a sewerage exposed to view
during the anthracite miners strike and
how magnates rode rough-shod over inter-
state laws and laughed as they trieked
pirates and rlarauders are handled with
kid-gloved geltleness. That discrimination
| i'm favor of the rich and powerful infiames
outlawry everywhere. If wealth Is exon
Grated when ii tramples on laws. then the
socialist and poorer class may be maddened
beyond endurance. The calamity of the hour
is the failure of conscience 1t is an old
lesson we require TO learn. There Is an es.
sence of things Jesus taught. there is
an attitude and healthiness and ROYALTY
of the soul itself. there is native purity
and uncompromising honor alive to the
| rights of others-this underIies all manners
1t Is the undersoil of stanch and reliable
patriotism. Ii Is the bar of God who Judges
not by the eye but by the heart of things
A LITTLE PREMATURE.
''It is for this reason lest we encourag
the now too great tendency to ignore the
laws that some of us who in earlier DAYS
were hot for prohibition. and who entertain
the profoundest respect for the aims and
unfiagging energy of the Prohibitionists are
somewhat afraid that their reforms are as
yet a little premature: and that if to-mor-
row morning a prohibitory legislation was
instituted by tomorrow evening the laws
i. would be evaded; in other words we dom
believe in making laws until we are sure
not only of a majority. but of such an over
| whelming volume of public opinion as will
| make il reasonably certain that such laws
will be enforced. law even If good be-
| comes a fount of evil when IL is sighted oil
| shelved for lack OF power behind it. to make
IL work Such laws urged too soon are like