September 16, 1897
NO human law can add anything to the law of God.
ENFORCED idleness is never promotive of good order nor of morality.
GOVERNMENTS were made to serve men, not men to serve governments.
THE wrong side of the question always tries to make up by the use of force, what it lacks in argument.
HUMAN law cannot strengthen the moral and religious safeguards which protect society. These can be strengthened only by that which purifies the heart.
SOME persons would get along very much easier in life if the time and effort they spend in trying to “get around” the truth and evade their duty were spent in searching out the truth and living it.
EVERY individual has an unalienable right to rest on Sunday, in accordance with what may be his convictions of duty. But his right to rest on Sunday cannot be secured by taking away another person’s right to work on that day. Rights do not thus conflict with each other.
GOD made men different from one another; he gave to each an individuality. But there is a power working in the world that tries to for men to act as though they were alike,—a power that sets fashions and prescribes customs for men in dressing, eating, thinking, and worshiping,—a power that has a few worldly moulds in which it would have all human thought and action run. All this is directly contrary to the plan of the Creator.
HUMAN law is powerless to stay the flood of degeneracy which is sweeping in upon the world in these last days. Human law can (to a large degree) prevent crime; but it cannot prevent that corruption of the heart which incites men to the commission of crime. There must be laws against crime; but our hope of safety must be not in legislation, but in the saving power of God given to the world in the gospel, both for society in general, and our own selves in particular.