However, the greater portion of this work is not special and for the criminal, but general and for society. To change the treatment of criminals, we must change every thing else. The dangerous class is the unavoidable result of our present civilization; of our present ideas of man and social life. To reform and elevate the class of criminals, we must reform and elevate all other classes. To do that, we must educate and refine men. We must learn to treat all men as brothers. This is a great work and one of slow achievement. It cannot be brought about by legislation, nor any mechanical contrivance and reorganization alone. There is no remedy for this evil and its kindred but keeping the laws of God; in one word, none but Christianity, goodness, and piety felt in the heart, applied in all the works of life, individually, socially, and politically. While educated and abounding men acknowledge no rule of conduct but self-interest, what can you expect of the ignorant and the perishing? While great men say without rebuke that we do not look at "the natural justice of a war," do you expect men in the lowest places of society, ignorant and brutish, pinched by want, to look at the natural justice of theft, of murder? It were a vain expectation. We must improve all classes to improve one; perhaps the highest first. Different men acting in the most various directions, without concert, often jealous one of another, and all partial in their aims, are helping forward this universal result. While we are contending against slavery, war, intemperance, or party rage, while we are building up hospitals, colleges, schools, while we are contending for freedom of conscience, or teaching abstractly the love of man and love of God, we are all working for the welfare of this neglected class. The gallows of the barbarian and the Gospel of Christianity cannot exist together. The times are full of promise. Mankind slowly fulfils what a man of genius prophesies; God grants what a good man asks, and when it comes, it is better than what he prayed for.
[31] The allusion is to the following passages of Scripture, which were read as the lesson for the day: Numb. xiv.; 2 Kings, ii. 23-25; and Luke, xv.
