The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1903-10-26

the law of Providence The judgment day
will be a voluntary testimony, uncoerced,
unbought, unyarnished. The soul has its
own jurisdiction and impeaches or acquits
can forever elude its summons or seizure.
Everything will come out of its own &C
cord from long concealment. just as at
dawn OF spring the lowly creatures crawi
out OF their burrows, or as stones work up
and up TO the surface OF the ground by
the heave of frost. Men may be cleared In
the lower court who will be condemned
before the tribunal of heaven. The reverse
Is true; many have suffered death on hu-
man scaffolds who will shine as martyrs
Delore the serene STANDARDS OF eternity. AS
time goes on everything tends to strip on
its own mask and reveal its essential char
acter. The conscience subpoenas Its own
witnesses.
Then more difference, perhaps the
most critical and deep-reaching. is this; that
up to this time the controlling idea of hui
man justice has been to punish the violat-
ors. The theory has been that law-break-
er has forfeited his rights to manhood.
Hence the institution of penal offices. To
XIII on the offenders was a short cut 10
societyS problem of handling the unruly
members. The history of justice through
the early ages is almost a history of muir,
der and vindictive treatment. The criminal
was as offal The sooner he was dispatched
the less trouble to courts. Prisons were
death chambers worse than guillotineS or
galloWS because more prolonged in their
savage or almost hendish inhumanities.
God raised up Howard and souls OF like
chivalry TO reveal the horrors OF dungeons
and rebuke the brutalism of European JUS
tice. but how many weary ages crept by
before the world was ripe to hear such
soul unwilling the unspeakable dooms of
derby of His mission to emancipate the
prisoners!
REVOLUTION SETS IN.
Now see how revolution has set In.
It is one of the superhuman wonders Of
this age, so full of wonders that the fac
ulty of surprise is becoming lost. Jesus
put the premium on the human soul. 1t
was Of peerless worth 1t is recoverable
Its plight prompted Calvary. This was the
truth under all truths. One unanswerable
argument for this divinity Is that in cir
cumstances most likely to cause despair
Jesus never lost His faith in mans posi-
bilities. He appealed irresistibly to the
very types Of men and women that were
ostracised from the respectable circles, and
sentiment, but belief in the soul of the
most Maynard as having capacity OF
return to God. This was the basic principle
of Christ and His new kingdom of retrieval
and regeneration. A mans salvation is
his coming to his real self.
1T followed that every type of human
nature however seedy or seamy from our
shallow social standpoint, every man
branded with crime and exiled from de-
cent haunts, everyone however imbruted
and smeared with the leprosy of vice, every
body was durable. Christ established
pharmacy and every disease was medicable.
This ushered in new era Of treatment for
criminals. To be satisfied with Furnishing
an offender was distortion of justice. Pen
alties were made for man but man was
made for something beyond penalties. Bar
barism makes crawling dungeons and the
humiliation of the culprit, the ultimate
point of judicial administration Christ
makes the prison school of reformation
through rigorous discipline but always with
a ray of hope. The worst man is corrigible,
recuperable and our penal methods are
themselves the most inherently criminal
unless they reconstruct the inmates in
character and offer freedom when they have
outgrown their anarchy of heart.
CHANGE OF FRONT.
"Inasmuch as every criminal is for the
most part the product of our imperfect
socia. conditions an obligation lies upon
the community not to scourge but elevate
and rectify the criminal OF course a thou
sand details enter in in carrying out this
commanding policy, but in this pulpit, in
this place of worship, it is ours to notice
the complete change of front involved in
this new method and to rejoice at one more
inubitable sign that the spirit of Christ
is prevailing modern life. Why doubt the ap-
proach of spring when birds are opening
concerts in every grove and flowers are be-
ginning to star every slope! Let the pro-
come noislessly 1t rebukes all our weak snip
by faith to look around upon the world and
see everywhere the quiet unconscious birth
ing of reforms which draw their life from
the increase of Christian conviction every
where.
So overwhelming are the Christian influ-
enceS dominating modern thought and life
that / might almost affirm that man can
walk blindfolded and backward into the
Kingdom of Heaven. Many unbelievers pre-
tending to hold alOof are really uttering
opinions cut out from the sermons of Jesus
and they do not know it If you transport
a man to a pine forest he will breathe the
pine scent every moment. His clothes be-
come perfumed with the fragrance of the
trees He will not be skeptical about it. If,
however, you pick out man who has been
long at work in a tannery and transport
him to some pine forest then he has be-
come SO penetrated with noxious od0rS that
he will still smell the tannery for weeks.
He carries the saturation in every garment.
And when he mutters, I have no conscious
ness OF any difference in these fresh silent
woods you are not surprised. But you
know that he is in new sphere and the
days wear on, he will come to realize the
tremendous transition he has made.
1.-The way to appreciate Christianity is to
be deported to some age where heather
cruelty and bigOtry were unmolested in
their outworking, or If 1 could gather all
skectics and set them down in some pagan
empire for year or two, not as connoisseurs
but as citizens to feel the ugliness and sharp
tooth of these backward governments, they
would use their return tickets on the next
steamer home and join the church at the
seaport lest they should forget to do so
| by the time they reached their own towns.
Suffice it this morning If all of us have
seen how the summer Is driving away the
winter how the restorative influences of the
gospel are mellowing and softening all our
austere institutions, how the God of love
means that man is divine and how Christ
taught that, If fallen, man has right to
every opportunity for return to righteous
ness. We are heathens at heart unless our
hearts have glowed with this essential
| truth from God through Christ
"THE REFORMED CRIMINAL"