January 12, 1899
THERE are no safe deposit vaults for individual rights.
THE true foundation of a government is not its laws, but the character of its people.
THE hardest and most hopeless task ever undertaken by man is that of effecting a moral compromise with God.
GOOD law is the result, not the cause, of right public sentiment. It can never be the starting-point in true reform.
A LEGISLATURE can pass laws, but it cannot turn out character. Only God can do that, and even he must have the coöperation of the individual.
THE only safe way to avoid the last step in religious intolerance is to refrain from taking the first.
THE world needs not to be more firmly bound by the fetters of law, but to be loosed from the fetters of sin. It is condemned enough by law already.
LAWS which are designed to coddle men are the worst of all laws, because while they seem to be good, they tend always to weaken character in the individual.
AT the fall of Adam, not the power of legislation, but the power of love, stood between mankind and moral ruin. And the situation is not different to-day.
[Inset.] PREPARING AN AMENDMENT TO THE LAW OF GOD. THE law of God declares, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work.” But mortal, fallible men have dared to make an amendment to that law, by declaring that the first day is the Sabbath, and that the seventh day is no longer to be observed. And they have even gone further than this, and are petitioning the legislatures to force this amendment upon all persons, by law! Shall each work have the support of lovers of justice and truth?