The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, 1913-04-22

To try to reform men with prisons,
Jails and rockpiles, is fatal mistake.
Yet we have not one too many OF these
formidable institutions. You can't re-
form the criminal with prisons and
jails--at best you can only restrain
him.
DR.. Oates, the eminent and compe
tent medical and hygienical inspector
of prisons and jails in Alabama, says
the time will come when crtminality
will be treated like any other disease.
Now when the learned doctor studies
this stupendous problem q little longer
he will find that the trouble is COM
pretended in a word far deeper and
stronger than criminality and that
word is total depravity.
Criminality is but the out-cropping
of the depravity of the human heart.
Criminality is but the symptoms of
the deep-seated disease and that dis
ease is deeper seatedsthan in the physi-
cal man. 1t lies deep in the soul in
the spiritual being Of the man In the
heart
We learn this not from Socrates-but
Jesus Christ, the Savior, the Son Of
the Living God. Turn and read Mark
z. 1928. Hence Christ shows us that
to deal only with criminality is to try
to cure a disease by merely treating
the symptoms.
The day has long since come when l
as a Christian minister must be equip
ped not with criminal weapons, but
with the mighty weapons through God
to the pulling down Of strongholds. &
Cor. 1866 and these strongholds are
the depraved human hearts of man
kind. I must get in touch with and
cooperate with every officer of the
OH 10r
police and sheriff, down to the hum
blest official in trying to rescue men.
I must point out to them that Christ's
work in this world is two-fold. His
mission had to do with both the body
and the soul Before Jesus talked with
the paralytic about the sin question,
he healed his body.
Before he preached about sin to the
poor man who had been afflicted for
So years with an awful disease from
sin, he dealt with the mans bodily con-
dition (John 5.5-14) and also with the
poor woman whose body was defiled by
sin.
He did not adopt the worlds policy
of making a woman's sin of adultery
the objectionable sin. He lifted her
up and put her on a plane of human
equality, and then said: Go in peace
and sin no more" In more than IL
years of evangelistic work and good
part of the time in the largest cities.
have learned that you can never
reach and reform the more than $4,000
girls who go wrong every year, by
ing them to a heaven hereafter.
The hardest thing 1 ever tried to do
was to preach to about six hundred
hungry men in one of the New York
missions These men were out OF
had into
mission from the benches Of the parks.
They had only responded to the mis-
sion's invitation because it was bleak
October day and came to get out of
the cold. To talk to these hungry,
iobless men about sin and hell and
heaven was a waste of breath. Sin
with their own or that Of somebody
else, had put them where they were
With the constant gnawing Of their
empty stomach and the thoughts or
their hungry wives and children they
were already beginning to feel the
realities of even the hell in this world
that comes from violated laws. 1t was
vain to try to talk to them about
what Christ says about the burning
hell in the next world. Gods word
shows us plainly that hell is but the
result, the elimination of violated
Iaw--both in the natural and the spir-
itual world. 1t can be summed up I'M
der the unalterable principle Of cause
and effect.
Let a railroad train, or an aero
plane violate the law of gravitation and
hell Is the penalty. Let steamship
violate one of the marine laws and
go crashing headlong in to an ice
berg-heIl begins.
Then God shows us that this world
IF ours has heen r11ined by sin. ana
that sin is a transgression of his laws
(debrews 2.2-3 1 John 3 ~ and that
this fatal transgression has not only
upset the spiritual world, but also the
natural world, as proven by the aW-
full disorders of human society-by the
awful wickedness, lawlessness, crime,
disease misery and poverty on the one
hand and the abnormal accumulation OF
riches on the other. and added to all
this are the floods, cyclones and fearful
calamities on sea and land. God shows
us In his word plainly that the result
the end of this transgression of his
law projects itself out of and beyond
this world into that awful place some
where in Gods universe called by the
Son of the Living God. "a hell OF I'M
quenchable fire." of everlasting pun
ishment' for those who will not come
to the only seat of mercy to the
right place, and accept the only rem
edy for sin and the one to escape the
consequences of Gods violated law.
Yes there is only one way TO cure a
man of sin. whether il be the con-
firrned criminal or the fashionable
moral man-only one infallible rem
edy and that is set forth in my text:
THE Blood of Christ"
Criminality or sin in any form comes