murder with death, in consequence of a precept given to Noah? Is not the Old Testament done away by the New, and a better-that is, a milder, a Christian government set up? I read some thing about the lex talionis, the law of reprisals and retaliation, as being contrary to the genius of Christianity. I would be glad to understand this matter. Olympas. The Scriptures called the "Old Testament," said to be done away, is that described by Paul which came from Mount Sinai in Arabia. That was the covenant of the Jewish peculiarities. It was an episode or digression from the patriarchal institution, and not being identified with it at its rise, or in its history, it could not be abolished with it. Some learned men have, indeed, confounded this precept with the law of Moses, and thus subjected it to the same abrogation. But this precept is older than Abraham by three hundred and fifty years, and older than Moses by more than seven centuries. The precept is therefore as old and as universal as the present world. The Jewish code had its cities of refuge for the innocent man-slayer, and its death for the murderer, and various other regulations on this subject. But here is a precept of God antecedent to it, not confined by it, and as broad as the whole stream of human nature, and extending through all dispensations and generations of men, neither vacated nor abolished by law or gospel. Reuben. Does not the Sermon on the Mount teach "No longer eye for eye, tooth for tooth, stripe for stripe, burning for burning?" was Olympas. So it does; but that sermon addressed not to civil governments but to Christ's disciples. And what have Christians, as such, to do with putting men to death, or of sitting on civil judgment seats! There is no compulsion in Christ's kingdom-no prosecution of disciples of Christ by disciples before civil magistrates on any account known in the New Testament. It proves nothing here to admit that Christians are not to retaliate any injury whatever. The question is not what Christian or Jewish governments, but what human governments are to do. The text says, "He that sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." This is a positive statute of man's Creator; and if civil government be an ordinance of God, then the ministers of that government have sin upon them who disobey the precept which institutes all civil and political rule. For to what precept, if not to this, shall men look for civil authority of any sort! This precept has in it the whole of civil government. In giving to man power over the life of man, as God's minister to execute wrath, power over the entire person and property of man is delegated, inasmuch as the greater always includes the less. God has sometime and somewhere given the sword to the civil magistrate. It is a real sword, and not a picture of one, which the civil magistrate wears upon his thigh. It is a sword to shed the blood of him that has taken the life of man in deliberate wrath or malice. Now if God has given the sword, when and where did he do it, if not in the text before us? This, my young friends, is the true and primitive and divine institution of civil government which has to do with man as man-not with man as a Jew or a Christian; but I repeat it, with men as man. Those who would strip the magistrate of the sword, have mistaken God's precepts, and have aimed, without intending it, a mortal thrust at all civil government. When there is no world, but all church, we will need no jails, pillories, scaffolds, swords, or magistrates; but till then I plead for the civil magistracy and the civil sword for a terror to evil doers, and for a praise to them that do well. If God's precept were obeyed, and every duellist and murderer were promptly put to death as the Lord has commanded, many lives would be saved, and the world would stand in awe of the righteous judgment of God. But I fear there is much blood-guiltiness on the heads of this land for their winking at various forms of murder, and therefore disobeying a positive command of God,-"By man shall his blood be shed." Rufus. Ought the civil sword of which you speak to be employed in shedding any other blood than that of the murderer? For example, ought the thief, the robber, the burglar, or the man guilty of arson, to suffer death? Olympas. By no means: except in case of house-burning human life be not taken. Francis. But the reason given for slaying the murderer, or for enforcing the precept, is to me somewhat mysterious. It is, "For in the image of God made he man." Olympas. This speaks a volume. It is not in the spirit of retaliation nor of restitution that the murderer is slain. It is because he has profaned the image of God by casting it to the ground. To kill a man wrongfully is to despise the image of God, and for this alone the malefactor deserves to die. No man therefore has a right to forgive : murder. It is an offence which man cannot forgive; for it is more than the simple breach of a divine law it is a marked contempt for the very person of the Lawgiver himself. It is a crime that caps the climax of human daring, and leaves a brand black as hell and deep as eternity on the face of him that perpetrates it. "No murderer can have eternal life abiding in him." The devil's worst character is, that he was a murderer -a duellist from the beginning. My sons, be admonished by this lesson never to cherish an unkind feeling to any human being. It is dangerous to get angry with your brother. Cain's murder was the fruit of Cain's passion. Anger sleepeth only in the bosom of a fool. Let not the sun ever set upon your wrath, and it will never rise upon your guilt. Regard that class of murderers called "duellists" as unworthy of your company. Remember that however men in their folly may wink at their crimes, the broad stamp of heaven's indignation is upon them, which nothing but the blood of Christ, accompanied by the purest tears of heart-felt sorrow that ever dimmed the vision of the sincere penitent, can wash away. To appear before the tribunal of Christ with the blood of God's image resting upon one's conscience, is the most hideous and appalling thought that ever pierced with anguish the human heart. Remember the petition-"Lord, abandon us not to temptation, but deliver us from evil." I had intended a few questions for Susan, James, and Henry, as well as for John, who has been so long absent from home, but the time will not now admit. We have finished, I think, the first ten chapters of Genesis, and are now fairly |