What? A man will tell the truth before God? You are quite wrong. A man will lie to himself and he will lie to his God. I know. I listened to a man lie to God. I will tell you the story.
The man’s name was Henry Spencer. You perhaps remember it. He was a murderer. One of his victims was a tango teacher named Mrs. Allison Rexroat. When the body of Mrs. Rexroat was found behind a clump of bushes in a lonely spot the police somehow blundered upon a clew. In four days they traced the murder of the woman to Henry Spencer. They wove a net of evidence about him. Oh they are clever, sometimes, my friend. On the fifth day Henry Spencer sat in the police captain’s office and they sweated him. After five hours he confessed. Ordinarily this means nothing. I have seen criminals confess to crimes of which they were innocent. Sweating is an unintelligent process, but then criminals are unintelligent persons and for a stupid mind the whole affair becomes quite an ordeal. The police captain says, “You did.” The criminal replies, “I didn’t.” It is very simple, my friend, but very wearing; particularly when there are five policemen to say “You did,” and none but yourself to say “I didn’t.” But it happened this time that the policemen blundered upon a real confession. After five hours Henry Spencer jumped to his feet and shouted, “Yes, I did. I killed her.” He was led away. Two days later he repeated his confession and elaborated on it. He sketched the murder, described the events leading up to it.
The policemen, highly elated, rushed out and verified all he had said. They found the hammer he told them he had used where he said he had thrown it. They found the effects of the murdered woman where he said he had hidden them. Henry Spencer went to trial. A number of attorneys defending him pleaded insanity. Spencer upset their efforts by rising in the court room and informing the jury he was quite sane and that he had committed a number of murders in his life. Given permission by the court he informed them that his life had been an extremely illegal one. He named five women he had killed. The police, highly elated, rushed out and verified his statements. In concluding, the defendant again sought to impress them with the fact that he was quite sane and willing to pay the penalty for his crimes. In fact several times he cried out from his seat, “Hurry up and hang me.”
You will argue, my friend, that there was an instance where in the very depravity of his nature a man attained the naked truth. You are quite wrong. Henry Spencer killed the women he said he killed, but he failed of the truth. For three months he had sat in his cell figuring the thing out. He came to the conclusion that by telling truthfully of his crimes and pleading truthfully of his sanity he would create the impression that he was indeed a maniac. You see, it is quite simple. Lies are always simple. It is only the truth which is impossible to understand. Henry Spencer’s logic proved accurate. He convinced the jury that he was a maniac. But he had placed too much faith on the technical interpretation of the law. The jury sentenced him to hang, anyway. So did the judge.
The date was set and Henry Spencer waited in the jail of a little town in Illinois. It is the duty of a large number of people in the world to save souls from Hell. Do not think I speak sarcastically, my friend. There is nothing wrong in this, except, of course, its utter futility. For two months the Rev. Mr. Williams, his wife, and his son visited Henry Spencer daily in his cell. They taught him religion. The doomed man was an illiterate. He had been brought up in the streets. He spoke English vulgarly and he understood nothing. His mind was unformed and his ideas of any particular life to be were as vague as his ideas of the life that was.
So he became religious. This is quite a story in itself, his acquiring “faith.” They played hymns in his cell on an old melodeon. Each night the Williams family knelt with him and prayed. He found in the Scriptures and their promise something that stilled the cold terror of death. His nerves became quiet. In fact he became buoyant. You will say it is impossible for a man to acquire genuine faith under such circumstances. You are quite wrong, my friend. I will prove it to you soon.
On the day preceding his execution Henry Spencer exhibited the only bit of nervousness during his watch for death. He objected to the big clock that hung in the corridor outside his cell. He didn’t like the way it ticked. You know why. So they removed the clock. How kind people are to those whom they are about to destroy. They quite resemble the Gods in the matter.
I am coming now to the point of the story, so be patient, my friend. It was a sunny morning in early July. Inside a stockade they had erected a scaffold. During the night Henry Spencer sang hymns. The sheriff sat on the doorstep of his home adjoining the jail listening and looking at the moon and greasing a hempen rope with cold cream which he borrowed from his daughter. He was a religious man and the hymns made him sad.
At ten o’clock the death march started from Spencer’s cell. Now there were thirty-eight steps leading to the top of the scaffold which rose high above the stockade top. I know this because a young man named Smith and I walked up the steps the midnight before and counted them. After counting them I made a wager with the young man that Spencer would never reach the top unsupported. So I was exceedingly interested when the death march entered the stockade. A number of persons were privileged to march in the line, and the first to appear was Spencer. He was dressed as if he were hurrying to a tennis game—white trousers, white shoes, a soft white collar, and a white shirt. On the pocket of his shirt he had pinned a red carnation. He walked with a light, springy step. Behind him trailed the Rev. Mr. Williams and the others.
Henry Spencer wore a good-natured smile on his face. When he reached the bottom step of the scaffold I held my breath. I watched him skip nimbly up the stairs, never missing a step, never tripping or hesitating. Under more virtuous circumstances the thing would have passed for heroism. At any rate I lost the wager.