The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1910-11-30
RELIGION IS
 NATIONS NEED
Dr. Lyman Abbott Declares It Essential to First Duties
 of Government
FUNCTIONS ARE. IDENTICAL
Primary Object Is Justice, and that Today, We Find, Includes Also Mercy.

me HIln anu ClOS-nS lecture Dy LIT. Lyman Abbott, editor of the Outlook, in the Dodge lecture course at Yale, was delivered to an interested audience in Lampson Lyceum last evening. Dr. Abbott's lecture was on the necessity Of religious life and religious institu- tions in order to enable Democracy to fulfil it's necessary functions. He spoke in part as follows:
 Can a nation have Religion?
 "The possession of a religious life IS not only essential to enable the Ma ton to solve alright it's great problems which are essentially religious, to full fill It's destiny, which can never be fulfilled without a rel gious conception In the Nation, and to live nobIy and heroically for which religious emotions are very necessary equipment; with out religion it cannot even fulfill it's first and simplest function. Some irony has been heaped by the modern school of political economists on what they call the night-watchman theory of government; but the first duty, though by no means the sole duty, of government is to be a night watch man. Its primary function, that which underlies all the rest, is to adm mister justice between man and man: to protect the individual from the aggressions of other individuals; to maintain liberty by defending it; to punish crime and to prevent it. and this is essentially a rel gfous func- tion- Justice is as truly a religious act as worship; and justice is the first duty of the Nation. To do justice and to love mercy were the first two clements in the old Hebrew prophets definition of relig on. and no Nation can fulfill it's true functions wh oh does not both do justice and love mercy. The first is scarcely at all. the second is by no means exclusively, the action of the individual; and neither concerns the individual alone; therefore religion does not concern the individual alone. Justice must be the basis of the Nations laws; justice the characteristic of the Nations courts; Justice the end of the Nations sys- tems of jurisprudence, both criminal and civil. We shall all probably agree that the Bible is essentially a religi- ous book; take down a copy of the Bible and see how large a proportion of it is given either to an exposi- tion of the principles of just 'ce, the application of those principles to spe- c'fic cases. or the history of the ad- ministration of such justice, either between man and man in government; or between God and man in history.
 But more than this. Modern peno- log sts are rapidly coming to the con- clusion that mercy and justice are not at variance, but that the truest mercy is also the only justice. Reformatory methods are taking in all our systems of criminal administration. We are discovering that the only way to pro- tect society from crime is to cure the crim nal of his criminal disposi- tion. We are establishing reforma- tories and penitentiaries in the place Of 5a!ls and prisons; we are establish ing schools in our State prisons: we are beginning to organize our system of pr son. labor not to make penal servitude hard, but to make industry in the convict habit; we are trying the experiment of an indeterminate sentence. treating the criminal as diseased, the prison as a hospital and sending the convict to prison as the. lunat.c to an asylum, until he is cur ed. But as it is the lowest and first function of religion to restrain men. so it is the last and highest function or religion to redeem them, and to put into them such springs of action, to form in them such habits of ac- tion, that they will require no re- straint mot self-imposed. Thus it would appear that the function of re- ligfon and the function of the Nation are in so far identical They both aim to restrain men from evil cours- es: they both ainleto redeem men from evil influences and habits. In short dlSO the fundamental function of the Ma tion, namely. moral cure There is indeed a difference. The Nation only aims to cure men of those vices which make them dangerous to society; while rel zion goes beyond this and aims to cure man of sin which makes him dangerous to himself. But the Nation cannot even enter upon it's task of administering justice. which in these later days we haves learned is also. an administration of mercy. without ex- ercis' sing a fundamental function of re. hgion-the twofold function of justice and mercy. How can a Nation, or- ganized primarily for this very pur- pose. fulfill it's first and fuunda mental duty. that for which it exists, and without which there would be no ex- cuse for it's existence, if it have not