1905 



CLEAXIXCS IN DEE CULTURE. 



187 



OUR 



HbK/iES, 



by' A.I. ROOT. 



He was wounded for our tran'gressions, he was 

 bruised for our iniquities.— IsA. 53 : 5. 



A few times in my life I have met with 

 people, or have read articles from people, 

 who rejected the atonement. I remember 

 that one man said it was a great blunder- 

 there was no justice in it; there was no good 

 common sense in punishing one man for of- 

 fenses committed by another. It only made 

 me think that great truths stand out all the 

 stronger for having sharp contrasts. Some- 

 times a good man is all at once assailed by 

 scandal; and this very thing sets people at 

 work to look up his good qualities, and the 

 result has many times been that the man 

 was thought the more of, and held in higher 

 estimation, because his good life-record had 

 been assailed. In the same way I think I 

 have got a new view or a better view of the 

 atonement because of what skeptics and un- 

 believers have said against it. Now, I am 

 not going to explain, or perhaps I might say 

 try to explain, how it is that Jesus could 

 suffer and die in order that we might live 

 and enjoy life in its truest and highest sense. 

 I am not a theologian; but nevertheless I 

 may give you some help in trying to grasp 

 this wonderful thought of the way in which 

 God saw fit to express his love for sinful 

 humanity. 



A few days ago a little tract came float- 

 ing through the mails. I do not know who 

 sent it. A great many come that I never 

 find time to read through; but now and then 

 I strike a little gem that I would not have 

 missed for any thing. The one I am going 

 to quote from says, "Bible and Tract Re- 

 pository, Chicago. ' ' 



When I was a boy at school, I saw a sight I never can 

 forget— a man tied to a cart and dragged, before the 

 people's eyes, through the streets of my native town, 

 his back torn and bleeding from the lash. It was a 

 painful punishment. For T/iaw!/ offenses? No ; for one 

 offense. Did any of the townsmen offer to divide the 

 lashes with him ? No, he who committed the offense 

 bore the penalty all alone. It was the penalty of a 

 changing human law, for it was the last instance of its 

 infliction. 



I suppose the above took place in . Scot- 

 land. You may be aware that it was cus- 

 tomary in the Old World to punish people 

 terribly for what we now call minor oflfenses. 

 In England, for many years men were put 

 in jail for debt; and, if I am correct, men 

 were hanged on the gallows for burglary 

 and stealing. Those old severe laws have 

 passed away or been modified. Perhaps the 

 tendency in the United States is just now 

 to make it too easy for transgressors be- 

 cause they are given too light a punish- 

 ment or none at all. The world could hard- 

 ly get along without penalties of some kind 

 for transgressing our laws; but these penal- 

 ties should be commensurate to the crime 

 committed. The laws should be framed by 

 our wisest and best men; and I believe the 

 purpose of all law and penalty is to lessen 



crime. We have been taught repeatedly by 

 history that, when punishment is too severe, 

 away beyond what is reasonable, it seems 

 to defeat the purpose for what it was in- 

 tended to do. When our people burned and 

 drowned witches to do away with witch- 

 craft, it not only failed in its object, but 

 some of the leaders were appalled by the 

 apparent fact that it made matters worse. 

 People confessed to being guilty of witch- 

 craft when they were entirely innocent. 

 The lynching business that has threatened 

 to spread over our land seems in a like man- 

 ner to make things worse instead of better. 

 A certain class of people seem to have al- 

 most a mania for committing the very crimes 

 for which others have been so severely and 

 terribly punished. I hope our country is 

 learning that capital punishment, to have 

 the desired effect, or to do any good at all, 

 must be administered by law, and directed 

 by comparatively slow, deliberate reason 

 and common sense. Let us now go back to 

 my little quotation from the tract. 



If such a punishment as is described there 

 were undertaken now, in any community in 

 the Unites States, there would be a revolt. 

 The women (God bless them) would revolt 

 and put a stop to such work, even if the 

 men let it go on. If it really were strictly 

 according to law I should expect that some 

 good man, perhaps some of the sufferer's 

 neighbors, would have volunteered to take a 

 part of his punishment. In fact, I should 

 be rather disappointed and ashamed of any 

 community that could not furnish one or 

 more who would volunteer to divide the 

 punishment with him, especially if it was 

 inflicted, as we are told, for only o«e offer se. 

 My good father used to tell me, even when 

 I was a boy, that, if our laws were bad, or 

 foolishly framed, the best way to get rid of 

 them was to enforce them. Hold fast to 

 law, no matter what happens. If the law 

 is a bad one, have it enforced and then take 

 the proper steps to have it repealed or 

 changed. In this case, even if it is true 

 that no fellow-townsman offered to help him 

 bear the penalty, it is also true that the 

 feelings of the people revolted to such an 

 extent from such a spectacle that the law 

 was changed from that time forward. This 

 man suffered terribly for his sin and per- 

 haps trifling transgression; but his suffering 

 was the means of relieving all mankind 

 through the great future from a similar 

 punishment. He was in one sense a mar- 

 tyr. We are not told how he bore the pun- 

 ishment, but the little sketch gives us a 

 faint glimpse of the way in which the dear 

 Savior suffered that we might live.. 



There is an old hymn my father used to 

 sing when he was busy at his carpenter 

 work. I wonder if it ever occurred to him 

 that his occupation was the same as that of 

 the dear Savior when here on earth. I dis- 

 tinctly remember one stanza of that old 

 hymn: 



Was it for crimes that I had done 



He groaned upon the tree? 

 Amazing pi1y! grace unknown! 



And love beyond degree. 



