n the treatment of criminals which has been
secured in that space of time. Then the use of torture was common
throughout Europe. Inability to comprehend and believe certain religious
dogmas was a crime to be expiated by death, or confiscation of estate, or
lingering imprisonment. Petty offences against property furnished
subjects for the hangman. The stocks and the whipping-post stood by the
side of the meeting-house. Tongues were bored with redhot irons and ears
shorn off. The jails were loathsome dungeons, swarming with vermin,
unventilated, unwarmed. A century and a half ago the populace of
Massachusetts were convulsed with grim merriment at the writhings of a
miserable woman scourged at the cart-tail or strangling in the ducking-
stool; crowds hastened to enjoy the spectacle of an old man enduring the
unutterable torment of the 'peine forte et dare,'--pressed slowly to
death under planks,--for refusing to plead to an indictment for
witchcraft. What a change from all this to the opening of the State
Reform School, to the humane regulations of prisons and penitentiaries,
to keen-eyed benevolence watching over the administration of justice,
which, in securing society from lawless aggression, is not suffered to
overlook the true interest and reformation of the criminal, nor to forget
that the magistrate, in the words of the Apostle, is to be indeed "the
minister of God to man for good!"

LORD ASHLEY AND THE THIEVES.

"THEY that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick," was
the significant answer of our Lord to the self-righteous Pharisees who
took offence at his companions,--the poor, the degraded, the weak, and
the sinful. "Go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and
not sacrifice; for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to
repentance."

The great lesson of duty inculcated by this answer of the Divine Teacher
has been too long overlooked by individuals and communities professedly
governed by His maxims. The phylacteries of our modern Pharisees are as
broad as those of the old Jewish saints. The respectable Christian
detests his vicious and ill-conditioned neighbors as heartily as the
Israelite did the publicans and sinners of his day. He folds his robe of
self-righteousness closely about him, and denounces as little better than
sinful weakness all commiseration for the guilty; and all attempts to
restore and reclaim the erring violators of human law otherwise