Article February 20, 1909 Issue

Our civilization is at once blessed and cursed with some...

Rev. George B. Dean

Lowell (Mass.) Courier-Gazette

Our civilization is at once blessed and cursed with some of our institutions. The ideal commonwealth will have no jails our prisons or asylums. These will have faded away. But today, these things are a necessity. Yet they are doomed, and the day is coming fast when they will be of the past. While not yet perfect, we are going on to perfection; and the enlightening influence of the church must be to pull down these institutions.

I would be sorry if I knew that the jail was about to be removed from the city and the police court pulled down; but if the teachings of the church were to control our commonwealth, these institutions would fade away like the leaves in autumn. If only men would live up to the teachings of the Bible, there would be a reformation so tremendous that everything in the past would be as nothing compared to it. The day is coming when these forces will so control the world that these institutions will be a thing of the past. The day is coming when the jail will be replaced by the church.

What are you doing for the discharged prisoner? There is many a case like that of Jean Valjean. What is the church doing? We are not worthy the name of the Master who came into the world to save the lost, unless we are trying to do something for the man who has been in jail We as a church, and all the churches, ought to unite in this work.

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