This old institution has passed away forever, in the ever flowing flood of time, carried away by the current of the centuries. The necessity for such a custom has long ceased to exist, but in the dim past, when the “avenger of blood” was abroad in the land and men, fed upon the delusions that were rampant, clamored, like wolves, for the life blood of the criminal, the old knockers on the sanctuary doors were most welcome sights to the fearful criminal, pursued by the howling mob. In our imagination we can see the cringing murderer, bent and fearful, as he hurries through the black browed night, followed by his blood-thirsty pursuers, like a hunted stag, fleeing for the blessed portals of the sacred places. What a sigh of relief he must have felt, when he reached the ancient altar of some of the old sanctuaries of the middle ages and with what exultation his heart must have throbbed, as he clung to the ancient “frith-stool” that for untold centuries had afforded protection to criminals from the vengeance of the pursuer. This obsolete custom of the inhabitants of the lost world of the past had for its recommendation the charitable and philanthropic object of saving men from the many “crimes against criminals,” then obtaining. Many instances, no doubt, existed, where the practice was used to prevent the civil authorities from enforcing the law and it was used as an instrument whereby “crimes went unwhipt by justice.” But in the harsh days when the extremes, in that regard, prevailed, it is as well that Mercy was thus used to temper Justice, and, upon the beneficent theory that “it is better for a thousand guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to suffer,” it was an institution accompanied with most benevolent results.