THE LAW AND THE SCRIPTURE.

Lake County Press, Issue 981, 26 September 1901, Page 7

THE LAW AND THE SCRIPTURE.

The following article was handed to us (i.e., an American newspaper) by a member of the Western Bar:

11. Y. M’Aden owned several hundred thousand acres of land in Western North Carolina. A mountain boomer squatted on a small part of it. Mr M’Aden employed Judge Annfield to bring an action of ejectment against, the squatter. The latter employed Mr Hart Bower to defend him. Mr Bower, in his argument to tlie Jury, said: “ Gentlemen of the. jury, 1 am not in the habit of quoting ►Scripture, for the reason, to my shame be it confessed, that ! am not as familiar with it as a good citizen ought to be. lam sure that each of you knows more about the Bible than I do. But there is a case in the Bible so exactly on all-fours with our case that I am going to violate my rule and quote it to you. David, as you all know, was a rich mail, and owned all the land in that region round about, just like my friend M’Adeu does, except a little corner, which Naboth owned, just like my client does in this case. David, besides being a very rich man, was also a verv covetous man. He wanted Nabotbs little patch of land. He wanted to complete his ‘ big farm,' as they say in England. He tried to buy the laud, but Naboth had cultivated it and improved it; had planted a vineyard on it, and made it very attractive, and besides it was the home to which be bad brought bis wife in the halcyon days of his young manhood, and where hiS children bad been born and reared. He was therefore much attached to it, and refused to sell it at any price. And now, gentlemen of the jury, you all know the means David used to get possession of that land; he sent Naboth in to the foremost of the battle, and had him killed in order that he might seize the land. Mr M’Aden docs not propose to kill my client, but he docs propose to turn him out of his home, him and his family, the wife of his bosom and the children of his loins, to become wanderers on the face of the earth. I rely upon twelve good men and true of Caldwell county to see to it that_ he does not. succeed in his nefarious scheme.” Judge Armfield in his reply said: "Gentlemen of the jury, I am going to differ with my Brother Bower about the law of this case, but you are not to take the la\v either from my Brother Bower or myself. You are to take the law from the Court, and apply it, as given to you by the Judge, to the facts of this case. So far as the facts are concerned, I am going to draw different conclusions from them from those given to you by Brother Bower. But you do not take my Version of the facts as true, nor do you take them from Brother Bower, nor from the Judge himself. You alone arc the sole arbiters of the facts. When it comes to the Scriptures, however, I know you have been amused by my brother’s attempt, to quote it. He need not have told you he was not familiar with it. He litis utterly demonstrated his utter ignorance of it. He lias mixed up the two stories of David and Uriah and Ahab and Naboth in a way that is astonishing. Now, we all know that David was a rich man, and we know also that he was a covetous man, but it. was not. exactly a vineyard that lie coveted. The fact is there were several generations—some hundreds of years between David, who coveted Uriah’s wife, and Aliah, who coveted Naboth’s vineyard. His mixing up these two incidents in the way he did reminds mo of an old colored preacher who, in the course of a sermon, took occasion to quote from the Bible. Ho put it this way; ’And now, my brethren, Paul was preaching in the fourth story of the temple, and the woman Jezebel sat in the window thereof, and became sleepy and nodded, insomuch that she fell out on the stones beneath and was broke into pieces. And the dogs of the city came and licked her blood to the number of five thousand, besides women and children. And of her fragments there were twelve baskets full picked up. And now, my brethren, in the day of judgment, whoso wife shall she be?’ ” ‘