Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/78

74 Government. I hope our own State, dignified already by so many noble acts, will noon rid herself of the stain. Lot up try the experiment of abolishing this penalty, if we will, for twenty years, or but ten, and I am confident we shall never return to that punishment. If a man be incapable of living in society to ill-born or ill-bred that you cannot euro or mend him, why, hide him away out of society. Let him do no harm, but treat him kindly, not like a wolf, but a man. Make him work, to be useful to himself, to society, but do not kill him. Or if you do, never say again, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us." What if He should tako you at your word! "What would you think of a father who to-morrow should take tho Old Testament for his legal warrant, and bring his son before your mayor and aldermen, because he was "stubborn and rebellious, a drunkard and a glutton," and they should stone him to death in front of the City Hall? But there is quite as good a warrant in the Old Testament for that as for hanging a man. The law is referred to Jehovah as its author. How much better is it to choke the life out of a man behind the prison wall? Is not society tho father of us all, our protector and defender? Hanging is vengeance; nothing but vengeance. I can readily conceive of that great Son of man, whom the loyal world so readily adores, performing all needful human works with manly dignity. Artists once loved to paint the Saviour in the lowly toil of lowly men, His garments covered with the dust of common life; His soul, sullied by no pollution. But paint Him to your fancy as an executioner; legally lolling a man; the halter in His hands, hanging Judas for high treason! You see the relation which that punishment bears to Christianity. Yet what was un-christian in Jesus, does not become Christian in the sheriff. We call ourselves Christians ; we often repeat the name, the words of Christ,—but His prayer? oh, no—not that. There are now in this land, I think, sixteen men under sentence of death; sixteen men to be hanged till they are dead! Is there not in the nation skill to heal these men? Perhaps it is so. I have known hearts which seemed to me cold stones, so hard, so dry. No kindly steel had alchemy to win a spark from them. Yet their owners went about the streets and smiled their hollow smiles; the