Society writes over the convict’s Inferno, “Abandon hope, all ye that enter here.” Even Byron was more cheerful and charitable. His prisoner of Chillon, doomed to solitary despair, saw a rift in his prison walls. Dragging his chain, he climbed upward and looked through. There lay the silver lake framed in the mountains, and the blue heavens over all. As he gazed through tears for his dead brother, a bird began to sing: A lovely bird with azure wings, And song that said a thousand things, And seemed to say them all for me. The gospel sheds upon the prisoner the ray of light, uncovers to him the glad sky, thrills him with songs of redemption and inspires him with the hope of a better life. This must ever be the method of all successful prison reforms. Reclamation is impossible except by creating self-respect and enkindling hope. To know that good behavior shortens the term incites all save the incorrigibly bad to a noble life. To sit in a dungeon of despair must make the prisoner indifferent to all the good without. Two young women artists have painted a great picture, which should hang in every prison where all prisoners can see it. The benignant face of Jesus, full of love and compassion, stands out in glorious relief. A poor man, whom each prisoner might take to be himself, kneels with his back to the observer. The Master’s hand is stretched toward the kneeling form, and He is saying, not in rebuke, but in hope, “I condemn thee not; go and sin no more.” We decorate our libraries and public buildings with suggestive mottoes and inspiring scenes of history. We leave the prisoner to gaze through iron bars or look upon bare walls. Jesus Christ would adorn those walls with pictures of hope. Jesus was not a reformer, but a Redeemer. He reforms man by regenerating him. His mission was not to Pharisees, but to publicans, and in his day the publicans and harlots entered in before the self-righteous. He came to seek that which was lost. The modern church ministers mostly to the saved. Jesus showed a more excellent way. A convicted robber was the first fruit of the cross, and Gibbon records that the first Christian devotees were social outcasts. Yes, Christ came to set the captives free--free from their old natures--by making them new creatures, free from the dominion of sin by providing them with the power of righteousness; free from the bondage of despair by enkindling a fadeless hope. While blest with a sense of His love, A palace a toy would appear; And prisons would palaces prove If Jesus would dwell with me there. If we could completely change the nature of all prisoners in America, so that they would henceforth love good and hate evil, I venture that this congress would vote in favor of opening the jails and freeing the captives. Nothing short of that is the Gospel program.