Nebraska Advertiser

THE LESSON OF THE SCAFFOLD.

The case of Ruloff, who died last week on the scaffold, is one of the most remarkable in criminal records. The history of his wickedness, so far as it is known, is in itself most extraordinary. Some twenty-five years ago this man was indicted for the murder of his young wife and infant child. The circumstantial evidence adduced in the trial created a universal conviction of his guilt. But as no lifeless bodies could be found this moral conviction could not issue a legal verdict. Subsequently Ruloff was tried a second time on the same indictment, and on the ground of new evidence he was pronounced guilty and was sentenced to death. While lying in jail awaiting execution he succeeded in corrupting young Jarvis, the jailor's son, and through him effected his escape. Forming then a partnership of crime with his deliverer, he perpetrated a long series of burglaries and thefts. It was in one of these iniquitous operations that the chapter of his crimes found its end. With this same Jarvis and another confederate he broke into a store in Binghamton, N. Y. The two clerks who slept in the building were aroused. In the struggle which followed Ruloff drew a pistol and shot dead one of the brave clerks. In the retreat which followed, the two associates of Ruloff lost their way in the darkness, and falling into the river, were drowned. Ruloff was captured on the following day. The evidence brought against him in the trial which followed was unanswerable. He was again condemned to death. Last week he met this sentence on the scaffold, in Binghamton.

But extraordinary as is this career of crime in itself, it is even more extraordinary in view of the character of the man. This Ruloff was among the most intelligent and cultivated men in the land. According to his own statement he entered school at the age of five years, and soon became proficient in all the English branches. When a young man he began the study of law, and yet at the same time he pursued the study of botany, chemistry, Greek and Latin. Afterward he set himself to acquiring a knowledge of medicine. While engaged in some of his most desperate burglaries he was hard at work in perfecting a science of language. In 1869 he appeared in the Philological Convention which sat at Poughkeepsie, and astounded the learned savans with his linguistic knowledge and his acute reasonings. During these months in which he has been awaiting in jail the day of his execution he has been visited by many scholars who have come away astonished at his varied intellectual acquirements. The man pursued his researches under the very shadow of his gallows. It all seems too strange for belief. And yet the whole case as it stands before us—this bright intellect joined to this career of crime—is only an affirmation of the truth which the Bible every way asserts. Education is not redemption. Culture is not grace. Learning is no security against temptation. Æsthetical accomplishment and fine literary taste are not essential qualities of character, insuring to the possessor a pure life and holy heart. This case of Ruloff shows the utter incorrectness of the present thinking in regard to education.

It is getting to be thought and asserted that all that is needed to save men is to fill them with school knowledge. Paul, long ago, showed the unsoundness of this theory when he said that the world through its wisdom came to deny God. The world needs to be convinced that scholarship is not going to redeem it: that for the world at large and for each individual in it a Divine power is necessary to restore and save them. Even above the doors of our schools and colleges it needs to be written that there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby they must be saved than the name of Christ, neither is there salvation in any other.