Editorial October 24, 1908 Issue

THE PLEA FOR JUSTICE

John B. Willis

As one looks out upon earth's millions to-day, he finds nothing in the whole list of wrongs that makes stronger appeal to his sympathy and sense of right than the condition of those who, through no fault of their own, are brought into subjection to ceaseless pain and misery, the vast army of those who are branded, and perchance at their birth, with that blighting word "incurable," and committed by medial authority to the prison-house of disease and despair, surely nothing could be more moving than these pictures of an unjust fate.

In the presence of such pitiful human conditions on every hand it would seem natural and legitimate to expect that every Christian would instantly and forever deny the lawfulness of these conditions, and he glad for any word of hope and encouragement that may be brought to the unnumbered "children of sorrow." The fact that at this time, as for centuries past, Christian priests and people are consenting without protest to such injustice seems utterly anomalous, and when we compare this attitude of Christian believers with the attitude of Christ Jesus toward the "brother in bonds," we can but be impressed with the thought of how this practical denial of Christ's present power to heal dishonors him before the world and hinders the establishment of his beneficent rule. When professed Christians are offended with those who bring the hope of health to the "incurable," through the apprehension of spiritual truth, then indeed is Christ "crucified afresh."

This committal of the so-called "incurable" to hopelessness by Christian people, precipitates the necessity of adjusting faith in a good God to the unfairness and injustice of conditions that, as men have been taught, are to be associated with His government. On the one hand moral sense cries out against the torture of the innocent for the offense of the guilty as inherently wrong, while on the other religious teaching declares that God is responsible for the laws which bring about this iniquity!

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