Jesus Christ sanctioned it for the same reasons. In the sublimest discourse ever delivered upon this earth he declared: “I am not come to destroy the law. I came not to destroy but to fulfil; for verily I say unto you, Until heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, until all be fulfilled.” Many of His acts were performed in order that “it might be fulfilled,” and the pendulum of His life swung through the arc of obedience. Among the elements entering into the mystery of the atonement is Christ’s vindication of that law, “The wicked shall not go unpunished,” by bearing the penalty in His own body on the tree.
Another ground for the imprisonment of the criminal is the protection of society. The Saviour’s entire life gives authority and force to that position. Did He not teach that it is better for one member to suffer than the whole body? that the commonweal should control individual conduct? and did he not leave a violent robber unpardoned on the cross, whose liberty might have disturbed the public order?
You teach that punishment is also reformatory, and with you the Scriptures agree. To be very accurate, we should say that justice is satisfied by punishment, and the wrongdoer is disciplined by chastisement. Punishment is for the good of the law, and chastisement is for the good of the sufferer. Incarceration is intended to _reform_ the prisoner as much as to punish him. While rebuking the lawless, you seek to help him back to an honorable career. This you attempt, not by a maudlin and demoralizing sentiment, which minimizes guilt or ignores wrong, but by a sympathetic and educational administration of prisons.
Sufficient support is found in the Bible for chastisement. Indeed, to spare the rod would more certainly harm the criminal than it would spoil the child. The rod of chastening, however, must not be held by a vindictive hand, but by one of love, and its strokes modified by a knowledge of the offender. Then it may become the saving agent in the life of the criminal, as the crosses of the thieves enabled them to see the cross of Christ.
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: