lly and
slowly worked out into a corresponding practice. The old body of
sin cannot be stripped off in a moment; the old encumbrance of
bad habits cannot be sloughed off like a serpent's coil. The new
spirit must incorporate itself slowly in new habits; and to this end
the delinquent must be aided in his efforts by a more or less
prolonged absence from the scene of his former temptations.
He must be placed in an entirely new and suitable environment,
and encouraging pressure must be exerted upon him to acquire
new habits of order, diligent application to work, obedience,
self-control. It is upon this idea that the moral propriety of
imprisonment and of prison discipline is based, whether the actual
treatment of prisoners be in accord with it or not.

And so we may pass on at once to the last and chief element in
the process of the reclamation of the evildoer, namely, forgiveness.
An angel's tongue, the wisdom and insight of the loftiest of the
sages, would be required to describe all the wealth of meaning
contained in the sublime spiritual process which we designate by
the word pardon. It is a process which affects equally both parties
to the act, the one who forgives and the one who is forgiven. It
exalts both, transfigures both, indeed establishes a new tie of
wonderful tenderness and sublimity between them. The person
who forgives is a benefactor.

Is it a little thing, when a man is sunk in the slough of poverty,
denuded of all the decencies of life, harassed day and night by
grinding cares, knows not whither to turn to find shelter and food,
for some fellow human being, moved by pure human kindness, or
let us rather say moved by respect for the worth which he sees in
his perishing fellow-man, to come to the aid of the latter, to lift
him out of his distress, to place him on sun-lit levels, to put him on
his feet and give him a new chance, to open for him a new career
in which effort may meet with its reward? Such an act of human
helpfulness is not a little thing; the man who does it is rightly
esteemed a great benefactor. Or is it a little thing to save the
imperiled sick, to bring back from the brink of the grave a precious
life, already despaired of? This, too, surely is not a little thing,
and the good physician who accomplishes such a miracle is rightly
esteemed a benefactor to whom lifelong gratitude is due.

But there is a yet greater thing, a benefit, by the side of which even
these--great as they are--