There were men there who had committed merciless robberies, cruel murders, heartless swindles, abominable depravities. I have felt greater temperamental aversion from many highly respectable persons than I did from them. Their crimes were one thing, they were another. Not that crime does not corrupt a man--stain him of its color. But there is always another side to him, a place in him which it has not dominated. Given his conditions, we cannot affirm that he is not as good as we are--that he is unfit to associate with us. And it behooves us always to bear it in mind that to affirm the contrary is an unpardonable sin against him of whom we affirm it; it works more evil in him than anything else we can do, and places us who repudiate him in a truly hideous posture. Shall we be more fastidious than God? All crime is hateful; but I came to the conclusion that there is only one crime which prompts us to hate the criminal as well as his crime itself. For this crime is one which originates in our heart; it is not forced upon us by need or passion or heredity. Therefore, it permeates every fiber of our being, every thought of our mind, every impulse of our soul; and we cannot say of it, this is one thing and we are another. It is an unhuman crime; and yet there is no punishment for it among human laws; rather, it is regarded as a mark of superiority. The most respectable persons in the community are most apt to commit it. And it was upon the suggestion and initiative of this crime that penal imprisonment was invented, and is perpetrated to this day. Christ condemned it; Christianity is based upon its repudiation; we call ourselves Christians; and yet it is the characteristic crime of our civilization. The Law and the Prophets are against it; it defies every injunction of the Decalogue, for it takes the name of God in vain, it steals, murders, commits adultery, covets and bears false witness; but we clasp it to our bosoms, and actually persuade ourselves that it is the master key to the gates of Heaven. What is it? It is the thought in a man's heart that he is better, more meritorious, than his fellow. It is engendered, most often, by a successful outward morality--conformity to the letter of the Commandments--the whitening of the outside of the sepulcher. But the stench of the interior loathsomeness oozes through. The only person unaware of that stench is the man himself. There is but one cure for it--what we call Regeneration; which makes us sensible of that deadly odor, and drives us freely and sincerely to detest ourselves in dust and ashes and bitter humiliation, to pity, succor and love our brethren, and to wrestle with the angel of the Lord for mercy. But we prefer to seek salvation from evil in the building of prisons.