THE KILLING OF ANIMALS. 315 I. Killing of Animals. 677. In itself the precept is unlimited, and prohibits the taking of the life of any animal. Nor has man any right to limit it to the human family. None but God himself, the author of life, can give authority, in any case, to kill. He has allowed us, however, by express statute, to take away the life of the lower animals, when they are necessary for our food, or when they are hostile and dangerous to us. This permission was first granted, immediately after the flood, to Noah and his descendants: "God said to Noah and his sons, everything that moveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things." Without such a positive grant from the Creator, man could have had no more right to take away the life of an ox, or a sheep, than he has to imbrue his hands in the blood, or to feast on the flesh of his fellowAccordingly, the Antediluvians, notwithstanding their enormous crimes, never feasted on the flesh of animals. Dr. Dwight has hence clearly shown that infidels, who deny the divine revelation of the Scriptures, can plead no right to eat the flesh of animals. men. The authority for killing animals dangerous to our own lives is found in Genesis ix. 66 Surely your blood of your lives, will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it; and at the hand of man.” Under the Jewish law, "the ox which gored a man or woman was commanded to be stoned." This law implies that ferocious and dangerous animals may be anticipated in the act of destroying human life, by being themselves put to death. 678. Although the inferior animals are subjected to our use by their Creator, no permission is granted us to treat them with neglect, harshness, or cruelty, or to kill them for the sake of sport and amusement. And, therefore, the man who wantonly takes away the lives of birds, hares, fishes, and other animals, for the mere gratification of a taste for hunting or fishing, can scarcely be exculpated from the charge of a breach of this commandment. If man's convenience, health, Or safety interfere, his rights and claims Cowper. 316 CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. II. Capital Punishment. 679. Upon this question a diversity of opinion has long existed, and still exists. Several able volumes have lately appeared on both sides of the question, whether it is expedient or right to inflict the punishment of death even for the greatest of crimes against man-that of murder. The crime of murder, is taking away a person's life, with design; and without proper reason or authority. The divine law concerning murder has already been quoted from Gen. ix., and requires, as has been generally thought, that the murderer should be put to death: "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." The national code of the Jews inserted, by divine authority, the punishment of death for a few other crimes. beside murder. This punishment was not merely permitted, but was required to be inflicted. In the case of murder, the punishment of death was affixed to it before the formation of the Jewish commonwealth; it was required to be inflicted by man, without reference to any particular civil polity; and the reason assigned for this punishment is applicable in all ages, in all states of society, and in all countries; "for in the image of God made He man." Now the question that ought to settle the whole dispute, in regard at least to the proper mode of disposing of the crime of murder, is this: "Will not the Judge of the whole earth do right?" He has decided that such a punishment is due to murder, from man to man; he reenacted the law under the Jewish polity, of which He was the civil as well as religious head; he imposed a similar punishment for other crimes; and He is the supreme disposer, because the author, of human life. It would appear, then, that other nations, as well as the Jews, are required to punish murder with death, and are not at liberty to impose a milder penalty. To inflict such a penalty cannot be considered wrong or inexpedient, without impugning both the wisdom and the justice of God. 680. The fear of sudden and violent death conveys more terror than any that enters the human heart. "The weariest and most loathed worldly life That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment To what we fear of death." CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. : 317 It startles and shocks the sovereign instinct of nature; imprisonment does not. It excludes earthly hope in the solitary cell, Hope sits by the prisoner, and makes his lot a cheerful one. Pardon, revolution, a thousand incidents, may open the door of the prison, but not of the grave. Nay, why is it that this punishment is opposed by a puling philanthropy? Because it is terrible. For this very reason, all who would not light the torch and whet the knife of the midnight murderer, all who would not have the dark form of Murder bending over the couch of innocence, and the fear of it mingling with every moment of the life of weakness, desire to see it retained. It is better that guilt should die than that innocence should bleed. God makes death the wages of sin; and the pity that would repeal the law is unwise, if it be not guilty. [N. American.] It is but a short time since that a man convicted of murder in the state of New Hampshire, or Vermont, declared that he would not have committed it, if he had not supposed that imprisonment, only, would have been the penalty. Even with all the terrors of the death-penalty, how astonishingly frequent is the crime of murder. Would it be safe to commute it for a milder punishment? 681. It brings upon one of our brethren of the human family, what human nature abhors and dreads most; it cuts him off from all the enjoyments of this life at once, and sends him into another, for which possibly he was not yet prepared; it defaces the image, and defeats the design of God; it overturns the great purpose of human government and laws-mutual safety; it robs society of a member, and consequently of a part of its strength; it robs the relations, friends, and dependents of the person destroyed, of every benefit and pleasure which else they might have had from him; and the injury done in all these respects has the terrible aggravation, that it cannot be recalled. Most wisely, therefore, has our Creator surrounded murder with a peculiar terror; that nature, as well as reason, may deter from it every one who is not utterly abandoned to the worst of wickedness; and most justly has he appointed the sons of Noah, that is, all mankind, to punish death with death. And that nothing may protect so daring an offender, he enjoined the Jews, in the 318 CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. "If a chapter which follows the Ten Commandments: man come presumptuously upon his neighbor to slay him with guile, thou shalt take him from mine altar that he may die." 682. God has discouraged murder, by teaching men in his providence, that in most cases it shall not escape detection. "Such a secret," says Daniel Webster, 66 can be safe nowhere. The whole creation of God has neither nook nor corner, where the guilty can bestow it and say it is safe. Not to speak of that eye which glances through all disguises, and beholds everything as in the splendor of noon; such secrets of guilt are never safe from detection even by man. Providence hath so ordained, and doth so govern things, that those who break the great law of heaven, by shedding man's blood, seldom succeed in avoiding discovery. A thousand eyes turn at once to explore every man, every thing, every circumstance, connected with the time and place: a thousand ears catch every whisper: a thousand excited minds intensely dwell on the scene; shedding all their light, and ready to kindle the slightest circumstance into a blaze of discovery. Meantime, the guilty soul cannot keep its own secret: it is false to itself; or rather, it feels an irresistible impulse of conscience to be true to itself; it labors under its guilty possession, and knows not what to do with it. It must be confessed; it will be confessed: there is no refuge from confession but suicide; and suicide is confession." Further, supposing, what seldom happens, that the murderer may escape judicial vengeance; yet what piercing reflections, what continual terrors and alarms must he carry about with him! And could he be hardened against these, it would only subject him the more inevitably to that future condemnation, from which nothing but the deepest repentance in this life can possibly exempt him. For no murderer hath eternal life; but they "shall have their part in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death." 1 John iii. 15; Rev. xxi. 8. But while murder must be punished with death, and there is authority given, from the example of the divine government over the Jews, to punish some other crimes in the same manner, the general spirit of the Gospel and of reason seems to allow of milder punishments in other cases beside murder, when the safety of society may be equally well, or sufficiently guarded. 683. To render the punishment of murder, by death, lawful, "it is ever to be remembered, that even when the punishment of death is lawfully to be inflicted, it can be warrantably executed only by the magistrate; and by him, only when acting according to the decisions of law. Private individuals have no more right to interfere, than if the man condemned were innocent; and were they to lay violent hands on him, although proved to be guilty, and rightfully condemned, they would themselves become murderers. Nor can the judge lawfully condemn any man, whatever he may think concerning the rectitude of the decision, unless, upon adequate legal testimony, fairly exhibited in open court, and in exact conformity to the modes of trial by law established. Neither can the executive magistrate warrantably do anything, in a case of this nature, beside merely executing the sentence of the judge; whether he esteems that sentence just or unjust. The time, the manner, and the circumstances of execution, ordered by law, he is bound exactly to observe. A criminal, although condemned to death, may, instead of being executed, be murdered; and that as truly as any other man. The sheriff, also, can easily lay aside the character of a magistrate, and assume that of a murderer. At the same time, all magistrates, in whatever station they act, are indispensably prohibited from the exercise of hatred, or revenge, in every form and degree against the criminal." [Dr. Dwight; Dick's Lectures.] III. Taking of Life in Self-defense. 684. When a man is attacked, he is at liberty to defend himself; and if, in the conflict, the intending murderer shall fall, no moralist would say that the defender was guilty of murder, provided that he honestly thought that no means of saving himself were left, but the taking away of the life of the aggressor. Assuredly he was not bound to be more careful of the life of his enemy than his own. |