At your best showing, you are a pharisee and a hypocrite, and
he is not; he stands confessed; your sin is still secret in your soul.
By what right do you look down upon him?
These things which I now say to you, I said first to myself, sitting in
my cell, or watching the endless gray-blue files shuffle past me on
their way to and from meals. It was of small help or significance that I
claimed innocence of the particular offense that happened to be charged
against me; I was as indistinguishable from these men in heart as I was
in outward garb and rating. And I had manhood enough to feel glad that,
since they had to be here, I was here with them. The burden of the
scapegoat has its compensations.
On my first Sunday in the chapel, there came an exhorter or revivalist,
accustomed to dealing with prisoners from the platform, and dubbed "The
Old War-horse of Salvation," or some such title. He had his white
waistcoat, his raucous, shouting voice, his phrases, his anecdotes, his
"my men," "my friends," "fellows"; his "I'm saved, I hope, and you can
be!" Oh, the phariseeism of that "I hope!" At the end of his uproar, he
called upon those of his hearers (we had all sat quite silent and
impassive during the performance) who were willing to be saved, to stand
up in their places. All the stool pigeons arose (poor devils), and a few
other bewildered persons who fancied it expedient to be on the side of
the angels, "Thank you--thank you--thank you!" hoarsely cried the
exhorter, naively accepting their response as a personal compliment to
himself.
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