So long as human nature retains its imperfections the baffled impatience of the strong will be apt to wreak its vengeance on the weak and defenceless. As recently as 1867, in Texas, the Jefferson “Times” records a case in which, under the auspices of the military authorities, torture was applied to two negroes suspected of purloining a considerable amount of money which had been lost by a revenue collector. More recently still, in September, 1868, the London journals report fearful barbarities perpetrated by the Postmaster-General of Roumania to trace the authors of a mail robbery. A woman was hung to a beam with hot eggs under the armpits; others were burned with grease and petroleum, while others again were tied by the hair to horses’ tails and dragged through thorn bushes. It must be added that the offending officials were promptly dismissed and committed for trial. A still more recent case is one which has been the subject of legislative discussion in Switzerland, where it appears that in the Canton of Zug, under order of court, a man suspected of theft was put on bread and water from Oct. 26th to Nov. 10th, 1869, to extort confession, and when this failed he was subjected to thumb-screws and beaten with rods.

In casting a retrospective glance over this long history of cruelty and injustice, it is saddening to observe that Christian communities, where the truths of the Gospel were received with unquestioning veneration, systematized the administration of torture with a cold-blooded ferocity unknown to the legislation of the heathen nations whence they derived it. The careful restrictions and safeguards, with which the Roman jurisprudence sought to protect the interests of the accused, contrast strangely with the reckless disregard of every principle of justice which sullies the criminal procedure of Europe from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century. From this no race or religion has been exempt. What the Calvinist suffered in Flanders, he inflicted in Holland; what the Catholic enforced in Italy, he endured in England; nor did either of them deem that he was forfeiting his share in the Divine Evangel of peace on earth and goodwill to men.

The mysteries of the human conscience and of human motives are well-nigh inscrutable, and it may seem shocking to assert that these centuries of unmitigated wrong are indirectly traceable to that religion of which the second great commandment was that man should love his neighbor as himself. Yet so it was. The first commandment, to love God with all our heart, when perverted by superstition, gave a strange direction to the teachings of Christ. For ages, the assumptions of an infallible Church had led men to believe that the interpreter was superior to Scripture. Every expounder of the holy text felt in his inmost heart that he alone, with his fellows, worshipped God as God desired to be worshipped, and that every ritual but his own was an insult to the Divine nature. Outside of his own communion there was no escape from eternal perdition, and the fervor of religious conviction thus made persecution a duty to God and man. This led the Inquisition, as we have seen, to perfect a system of which the iniquity was complete. Thus commended, that system became part and parcel of secular law, and when the Reformation arose the habits of thought which ages had consolidated were universal. The boldest Reformers who shook off the yoke of Rome, as soon as they had attained power, had as little scruple as Rome itself in rendering obligatory their interpretation of divine truth, and in applying to secular as well as to religious affairs the cruel maxims in which they had been educated.

Yet, in the general enlightenment which caused and accompanied the Reformation, there passed away gradually the passions which had created the rigid institutions of the Middle Ages. Those institutions had fulfilled their mission, and the savage tribes that had broken down the worn-out civilization of Rome were at last becoming fitted for a higher civilization than the world had yet seen, wherein the precepts of the Gospel might at length find practical expression and realization. For the first time in the history of man the universal love and charity which lie at the foundation of Christianity are recognized as the elements on which human society should be based. Weak and erring as we are, and still far distant from the ideal of the Saviour, yet are we approaching it, even if our steps are painful and hesitating. In the slow evolution of the centuries, it is only by comparing distant periods that we can mark our progress; but progress nevertheless exists, and future generations, perhaps, may be able to emancipate themselves wholly from the cruel and arbitrary domination of superstition and force.

INDEX.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Legg. Villæ de Arkes § xxviii. (D’Achery Spicileg. III. 608).