RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE IN NATIONAL

HISTORY.

By GEORGE Edward Newell, of Park College.

BIOGRAPHICAL.

George Edward Newell entered Park College, Parkville, Missouri, in the fall of 1895. Pursued full academic and college courses at that institution, and was graduated in June, 1904. Mr. Newell won the academy declamatory contest in his junior year, and was on the winning team of the freshman-sophomore debate. He was also on Park's inter-collegiate college course in the freshman year of his debating team, which defeated the Washburn College team in the spring of 1903. In his junior year he won the junior-senior oratorical contest, and in his senior year he was the winner of the Missouri State oratorical contest held at Cameron, Missouri, in March, 1904, securing eight first places out of a possible nine judges, thus breaking the State record up to that time. He secured second place in the InterState Contest which was held at Notre Dame in May, 1904, losing first place by only one point. During his senior year Mr. Newell was president of the college Y: M. C. A. and editor of the college paper. At present he is a middler in the Theological Seminary at Princeton, New Jersey.

THE ORATION.

Delivered at the Inter-State Oratorical Contest, at Notre Dame, Indiana, May 4, 1904, taking second prize. Judges: Messrs. SHAMBAUGH, HUGHES, THWING, CHALMERS, CALLEN, and STEVENS.

The reign of law is absolute and universal. Born in the mind of God, it is as old as the Infinite and as lasting as Eternity. In conformity to law the Creator built worlds and ordered the universe. The smallest atom that floats in space

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moves in obedience to law; and man himself, highest of creative beings, is bound by the same unyielding principle. Society and government find in law the ground of their being and the only guarantee of their perpetuity. Law is everywhere and at all times the expression of the will of the Almighty. In the workings of nature and in God's dealings with man, He rules by established law, and provides inevitable penalties for its violation. The divine Being has uttered a protest once for all against the spirit of lawlessness, a protest which men have called retributive Justice.

In the physical nature of man, the law of natural growth is inexorable. It demands obedience, and ever affirms that harmony in development is the only positive guarantee of perfect strength. In the sphere of man's social activity we find the same force-salutary or destructive in its working. History's message is this: Organized society must give way to confusion and anarchy unless the individual lives above self, controls his passions, and makes mutual aid the rule of action,— thus "realizing in the liberty of one the liberty of all." Law pronounces altruism to be the vital principle of all enduring states. Nations that have failed to obey the law of moral living, and have disregarded this fraternal spirit, have always forfeited their right to empire, and often have been crushed beneath the wheels of Retributive Justice, broken and scattered along the pathway of time, striking illustrations of the reign of law in national life.

In all the ages of the world men have recognized this principle of Retributive Justice, and have sought to explain it. The Greek, whose fertile imagination exalted the commonplace phenomena of nature and peopled the heavens with a race of gods, evolved the thought of a personal spirit of retribution. Scorning the vague and the abstract, he put the conception in concrete form and called it Nemesis, the personification of the righteous anger of the gods. The Furies, too, those monsters with snaky hair and bloody tongue, represented in horrible form the Greek idea of divine vengeance. Flying upon swift wings of wrath, with unrelenting purpose the dread goddesses pursued the evil-doer and brought him at last to ruin. Over the brightness and exuberant joy of the life of the Greeks, this thought of imminent retribution was suspended like a shadowing cloud. In literature, it was the central theme of the tragic poet; in art, it inspired some of the most sublime but terrible achievements of chisel and brush; in religion, it was a phantom of threatening mien, ever present to chill the enthusiasm of success and pale the flush of pride.

Thus did the ancient Greeks express their conception of law. But imagery of fable has been replaced by statement of fact. Reason holds her solemn court where Imagination gamboled in masquerade. Science has entered the most secret realms of nature, pierced with keen vision the mummeries of superstition, and restated the un

changing law of God. The legend of Nemesis is remembered today only as a fantastic conception of an imaginative race, but the principle upon which it was founded gains a broader sway with each new advance in knowledge, and holds human life in a new vassalage as the world's progress insures the conquest of truth.

History abundantly illustrates the force of Retributive Justice in the career of nations. Look down the vista of the ages and behold Babylon with all her wealth and luxury, with her towering walls studded with brazen gates, with her "pinnacles glittering in the sheen of a tropical sky." Exulting in pompous pride, she disregarded the claims of human fellowship, and sought to perpetuate her power by the bleeding hands of her bondsmen. Her monarchs, supported by the pikes of mercenary soldiers, exercised tyranny, and were deaf to the pleading of those whose lives they had embittered by slavery. But, at last, the piteous cry of the host in thralldom was heard above the orgies of the court and gluttonous kings, and the blasphemous boasts of Belshazzar were suddenly checked when the hand of Retributive Justice wrote upon the palace-wall the doom of a nation that had denied the obligations of right and mercy. The law of God flashed forth, declaring that “Justice cannot be cheated"- that retribution is inevitable. The same words repeat the doom of any nation that violates the law of Human Brotherhood.

Retributive Justice is illustrated, not only in primitive nations, but also in those of modern times.

At the dawn of the sixteenth century Spain was the dominant nation of the world; her voyagers had opened a new continent to adventure and exploitation; the earth shook from the North Sea to the Mediterranean beneath the tread of her victorious armies. For years the wealth of the two continents had been poured into her greedy coffers. Philip the Second, "at whose frown all Europe trembled," ruled an empire more vast than that of the Cæsars. But in spite of the wideness of her sway and the splendor of her glory, Spain was doomed to decay. She had not learned that national endurance can never be founded upon material prosperity alone. Exulting in her pride, she forgot the thunders of Sinai, when God's own voice announced formally to the world that obedience to law is the duty of men and nations. The successors of Philip the Second, not knowing the secret of that monarch's power, imitated his defects, thus making cruelty and oppression the scepter of their dominion. Religious fanaticism became the emblem of peerage and the badge of patriotism. The unjust expulsion of the Jews and the Moors and the persecution of reformers with all the tortures of the Inquisition marked the setting of Spain's sun of power-her brilliant day of misrule slowly faded into a night of retribution. As poverty succeeded opulence, her trib