ffender, "Neither do I condemn thee; go, sin no more"; but it is
very clear that the opposite course does by no means lead to a
cessation of sin. For what is the total result of all our punishments
in the name of law but the manufacture of criminals? According to our
theory of punishment a jail should be a seminary of virtue and
reformation. Men submitted to its discipline should come out new
creatures, cured of every tendency to crime. On the contrary, in nine
cases out of ten, they come out a thousandfold worse than they went in.
If this is not the case, it is because some Christian influence, not
included in our legal system, has reached them. But such influences
reach very few. The influences that operate in the great majority of
cases are wholly demoralizing. Those who enter a jail with genuine
intentions of reform speedily discover that they are not expected to
reform. They are branded indelibly. They are exposed to the
corruption of associates a hundredfold worse than themselves. They
leave the jail with every avenue of honest industry closed to them,
every man's hand against them, and no career possible to them but a
life of crime. When we consider these things we have little cause to
congratulate ourselves upon the results of our systems of justice.
Even a general amnesty towards every form of crime could scarcely
produce results more deplorable. Fantastic as it may appear, yet it
seems not improbable that the abolition of the jail and of all penal
law, might produce benefits for humanity such as centuries of
punishment on crime have wholly failed to produce.

But no one asks this at present, though the day may come sooner than we
think, when society, tired of the long failure and absolute futility of
all its attempts to cleanse the world of crime by penal enactments,
will make this demand. It is enough now if we press the question
whether there is not good ground in all this dreary history of futility
and failure, to make some attempt to govern society by the ideals of
Jesus? Why should not the Church replace the jail? Why should not the
offender be handed over to a company of Christian people, instead of a
company of jailers, paid to be harsh, and by the very nature of their
occupation trained to harsh tempers and cruel acts? Who are better
fitted for the custody of the criminal than people whose lives are
based on the merciful ideals of Jesus? How could such persons be
better employed than i