, 1882-06-30


revolutionary force and religious fer
vor had left this horrible sediment of
malignity and murder, his hand
slaughtered a lofty life and reversed
a national movement Religion may
we'll shudder to behold the man, but
he is hers. He is not an intidel. He
is a Christian. 1t is Il ghastly and
loathsome skeleton, but it is the
skeleton of pure ancestral HuguenOt
faith, perfect in all its parts, Heav-
emily influence, divine protection and
providence, communion with God,
companionship with Christ there is
not a sacred truth, a solemn trust,
which Guiteau has not besmirched
with the acrid poison of his tongue.
Naming everything which the church
holds holy, he stands before the
world and the church, totally de
praved, proving, by the horror with
which we regard him. how little the
church has ever believed in the doc
trine of total depravity.
Let us be frank. The church stood
ready, watching, eager to leap up, and
claim for prayer the credit of Gar
fields recovery. She could not wait
the issue. When the cloud lifted a
little and let momentary CLEAN of
hope shine through, the church sang
softly, tentatively, timidly, as needs
she must, her delight in the answer
to prayer. But if Gartield's recovery
was answer to prayer and justification
of the church's theory, than his death
was the nonanswer to prayer and
the destruction of her theory. If the
church POUNDS her philosophy on the
sand, that philosophy must crash
when the sand is washed away. When
James, a servant of God and of the
Lord Jesus Christ, sent his greeting
to the twelve tribes which were scat
tered abroad, and assured them that
the prayer of faith should save the
sick, it may well be that he spoke the
truth. / can easily believe that he
by whom the worlds were made was
perfectly acquainted with all the
properties and forces of matter, and
could certify himself to his feeble and
Ignorant followers by combinations
and appliances, which science has
taken thousands of years to feel after
and will take thousands more to com
mand. But to say that he does it now,
to say that, in response to the prayers
of the church, he did it last summer for
the United States of America, is
statement which intelligence cannot
accept, and which ecclesiasticism can
not enforce. Science, indeed, reaped
a harvest of humiliation, but theology
won no laurels from this solemn sum
mer
When surgery had relinquished
the tortured body, and theology had
tried to readjust herself from the
shock of the released soul, law came
to the front to avenge violated justice
and to protect menaced society. The
process has not been fragrant, nor
does the result betoken a brilliant
triumph. | do not presume to pass
judgment upon lawyers, any more
than upon ministers and doctors. /
can readily believe that the practi-
cable best was done. / feel not the
least sting of shame before foreign
nations. | doubt that many a
European prisoner has behaved as
ill, and whether he has or not, /
would rather an accused man should
sauce high heaven, than be hustled
away in secrecy to chains and dun
geons, as has been done to so many
of the old worlds accused. l rejoice
to remember that the only fault
found with Judge Cox was that he
showed himself too lenient toward
the hated and hateful criminal that
an American Judge, fully aware of
the merited, unsurpassed, and over
whelming popular odium visited on
the guilty wretch, chose himself to
share it rather than abate one jot or
little of the possible shelter which the
law provides for accused and ar
raigned prisoners. 1t was justice,
and justice alone-overstrained, pos
sibly, but erring,. if at all, on the
humane and generous side which
allowed Guiteau liberty to make full
of his deformed nature
and of that / trust Americans will
never be ashamed.
Nor did anything happen in the
courtroom to justify the wide and
wild condemnation of the trial. The
indecorum was almost exclusively
confined to the newspapers. Among
the spectators it was of the rarest and
slightest. The order of the assembly
was scarcely more disturbed by the
harsh, rasping, monotonous outbreaks
of the shameless prisoner than is the
order of society by the mendacious,
malignant, egotistic, Guiteauistic bab-
ble of the London journals upon the
trial.
What is to be said of the law is
said, not relatively to its administra-
ton in other courts or countries, but
to the administration of the law in