The Bridgeport evening farmer. [volume] (Bridgeport, Conn.) 1866-1917, 1911-02-22
FORMER WATERBURY
PASTOR ADVANCES
STARTLING VIEWS

Waterbury, Feb. 22.-The Rev. Os-
car Haywood. who used to be pas
tor of the First Baptist Church in
this city, and who, since his occu-
pancy Of the pulpit in the Collegiate
baptist Church in New York, has
won prominence by reason of his in
s1stence that men ought to be sent to
the Kitchen and taught to cook and
sew, has now undertaken a crusade
against the gallows. At the Baptist
Pastors Conference in the Madison
Avenue Baptist Church this morning
he spoke on 1.-THE Hideous Key
stone Of Civilization, the Gallows,''
saying:
'The gallows was not invented by
Hamar, it existed long before his
time; indeed the civilized got it from
the savage as the Christian got his
gunpowder from the Pagan. The
Assyriologists who have been uncov-
er1ng Cities that have slept for I'M
known centuries under the desert
ands, and the psychologists general
ly have found that the penal laws of
'emcte antiquity were not vastly diff
serent from our own. but in Assyria,
Egypt, Chaldea and Arabia they have
-ound rude pictures of the galFows
md other instruments of torture. In
Christian nations the death penalty
aas numbered almost as many vic
inns as war.
Spain was early christianized vet
Pizzaro with his 200 pious banditti
massacred the Peruvians, robbed
them, broke faith with them and con-
demned their great leader whose
name 1 cannot pronounce, to the gar
otte after he had paid a room full
of gold for his ransom. Italy. that
claims SO per cent. of her population
as Christian, leads the world in in
ventions of exquisite tortures, and
thrOnQh0f1f EI1rOnn m
/ istic France judicial murders are so
numerous and common: that. the eX-
ecutfOner is a state dignitary. Our
western civilization has driven almost
every species of wild animal which
it found on this continent into extinc-
ton; has invaded the Arctic Circle
and Africa in pursuit of the beautiful
things of the forest and desert; has
given to the English tongue it's most
graves of some Indians at Cooper
town. this state; has also given the
world its most terrible instrument for
the inf1iction of judicial death, an in
fernal machine with which men are
killed by bolt of lightning-and be
1t said to our everlasting shame this
is the only land in Christendom that
trails the sky with the smoke Of hu-
man sacrifice.
The gallows Is one thing revolu-
tons have been powerless to destroy.
Indeed they have made liberal use of
IT, But With the ages the spirit of
meekness wakes. In Holland at one
time the death penalty was fixed by
weight. Above or below a certain
weight man was a .sorcerer, a wo-
man witch. Nothing was more in
.genious. They put you on the scales
the evidence burst forth; too heavy
yot were hanged, too light you were
burned. At one market place in
Holland the scales for weighing
witches may be seen to this day. it is
used now for Weighing cheese-re-
ligion has degenerated so much. One
of the obsolete laws of England, new
er repealed, but outgrown, required
that man be put to death for cut
! ting down three year old Poplar
tree
'In the United States capital Of
lenses have diminished from more
than~a dozen to less than five in most
states, to one in many, and in two
| or three it has been abolished alto
gether. 1t is a fact, however, that
non-Christian men, unbelievers have
| lead the movements for the abolition
of war and death penalty-Beccaria
Voltario. Victor Hugo, Moncure Dam
lei, Conway, Carnegie.