though sophistical, reasonings of infidel philosophers. It is known that the Stoics, whose system has been partially revived in modern times, taught, amidst some lofty sentiments of morality, that a man may justly and reasonably withdraw from life whenever he finds it expedient: life and death being in their nature indifferent, and because life may be less consistent with virtue than death.

The same opinion, though opposed to the systems of the early Greek philosophers, seems to have been maintained by other ancient sects, and to have been cultivated with peculiar care in the theories of education, from which the noblest characters, especially in Roman history, imbibed their notions of virtue and principles of action. In the absence of divine revelation, when such sentiments were commended by the collective wisdom, eloquence, and example of men who were the oracles of the world, we cannot wonder that self-destruction was committed, recorded, and of course contemplated, as one of the highest efforts of virtue. In the familiar instances of Lucretia, of Brutus, and of Cato, the chastity of the first, the inflexible patriotism of the second, and the philosophic magnanimity of the third, were viewed with higher interest and veneration, when associated with what was admired as the heroism of self-destruction.

In pronouncing judgment on the degree in which suicide, committed by persons so educated, was criminal, and in deciding how far the pride and passions of the depraved heart might operate to prompt the deed, which the tenets of a revered, though mistaken philosophy was summoned to approve,-we are not now immediately concerned:" God is righteous."

But, in estimating the guilt of self-murder, we are to exert all the hardihood of mind we can command; we are to look at the act, and the numerous corrupt propensities of the heart that lead to it,-at the prohibition, and the dreadful curses by which it is

enforced. He who destroys his own life, assumes a right to dispose of that which is at the command only of the God whose gift it is, and on whose pleasure the duration and the circumstances of its continuance must of necessity depend. He betrays that dissatisfaction with the ways of Providence, that insubmission to the will of his Father who is in heaven, that distrust of the provisions of divine care and goodness, which prove his heart to be desperately wicked. He commits an act involving consequences to himself and to all with whom he is connected, of incalculable and irretrievable disgrace and misery. It may be said, in general, that he is arrived at a crisis in human depravity, which must have been preceded by a long and progressively criminal career of sin. Doing violence to the strongest instincts of nature,defying the terrors of law and of justice,-despising the hopes of pardon and the assurances of salvation to the uttermost for all that come to God by Christ Jesus, he rushes, beyond the possibility of repentance or the reach of mercy, into the midst of unutterable and eternal anguish.

The law which condemns suicide unquestionably forbids all habits of indolence and intemperance, subjection to the domination of impetuous passions, extravagance in a man's notions, feelings, or undertakings, and practical indifference to the scripture doctrines of a superintending providence, and of salvation through the atonement of Jesus Christ, habits which have a certain and often rapid tendency to produce the state of mind in which suicide is frequently committed. We shudder, naturally, at the catastrophe: we turn with horror from the crime: let us dread every indulgence from which the the temptation to overcome these feelings may gather strength.

The sixth commandment is obviously and grossly violated in every instance of duelling.

The history of duelling is familiar to all who are acquainted with the ancient customs of European

nations. Originally an approved and sanctioned method of determining disputes connected with the spirit of chivalry, and a high sense of military honour; the practice, in modern times, can only be considered as, at best, a vestige of feudal barbarism. The grounds on which its defence has ever rested are capable of being subverted on common rational principles; for it constitutes the person who thinks himself injured, the judge, the witness, and the avenger of his own wrong. The decision, viewed, at first, by the dupes of superstition as an appeal to Heaven, is, from men too proud, or (if they please) too well informed to be superstitious, an appeal to mere chance, or to skill and courage in the use of weapons; an appeal, by which it is, of course, impossible to determine what is right or wrong in human actions. The practice is, in its nature, subversive of all law, of every interest of justice, and of every principle of society. The plausibility of casuistical advocates, and the superficial declamation of fashionable novelists, may 66 excuse the devilish deed:" but the testimony of enlightened legislation,the voice of reason, the dictates of humanity, the claims of family,-the eternal obligations of morality and religion, are united in condemning it. The duellist exalts a law invented, sanctioned, and observed by men of his own principles, above the laws of every well-governed community, and even above the commandments of God. He assumes a right, first, to expose his own life, and next, to destroy the life of his brother, and consequently, to inflict the pangs of bereavement and of unavailing regret on their separate connexions,—a right which no human being can naturally possess, and which he can have no method of acquiring. He ventures on the borders of eternity in a state of mind the reverse of that which is essential to future happiness; and he uses his utmost skill to hurry a fellow-creature, in the same state of unpreparedness, to the destinies of another world! In this view of "the

affair," no man has a right either to give or to accept a challenge. For every personal injury the institutions of his country have or have not provided redress. If they have, he may claim their protection for the vindication of his honour :-if they have not, he must await the righteous decisions of the final judgment, satisfied that his "witness is on high, that his record is in heaven." "Give place unto wrath; for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Let every soul be subject to the higher powers; for there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God."

This commandment forbids murder.

That murder is a crime needs not to be stated: that it is one of fearful magnitude has never been seriously questioned. It is a crime capable of endless degrees of aggravation, in the motives by which it is influenced, and the circumstance in which it is committed. The guilt of depriving a fellow-creature of life is enhanced by the malice, the pride, the ingratitude, the cruelty, the avarice, the impiety of the perpetrator, the relation in which he may have stood to the victim of his fury, the evils he has inflicted on any portion of the community, by depriving it of the life and services of the murdered party, the convictions of guilt which he has baffled,

and the complication of transgressions which must necessarily have preceded, accompanied, and followed the completion of his design. Of the heinousness of the design itself, apart from all its incidental motives and aggravations, our feelings cannot be too deep. Every man is your brother, and you are bound to love him, to promote his happiness to murder, is to hate him,-to do all that a creature can do to inflict on him the greatest misery, and that for ever.

Man was made in the "image of God:" to destroy him is visibly to demonstrate our hatred to God who made him. In the economy of salvation revealed to

us in the gospel, the nature of man is ineffably associated with the nature of God; and thus a peculiar dignity, a sacredness attaches to the human nature: it is encircled by the grandeur, not only of its own immortality, but likewise of its alliance with the Infinite Majesty.

To estimate aright the guilt of murder, we must know the value of the life it destroys,-to the individual, to his connexions, in their most extensive ramifications,-to his country, in all the services he was capable of yielding her, to the plans of Providence, in all the blessings that his life might have been the means of conveying to the existing generation or to posterity. We must know the worth of the ever-living soul,-driven by the murderer to its eternal doom, it may be, a doom of torture! We must know the effect of the crime on the heart of the murderer himself. We must know, finally, the majesty insulted, the goodness abused, the authority trampled on, the warnings and entreaties against which this monster of cruelty has been impiously hardened, and the weight and fierceness of that everlasting wrath to which the righteous government of God condemns him.

A deep abhorrence of this crime might seem to be implanted in our nature; for it has always been felt to be deserving of the severest punishment. Cain feared that any man finding him might slay him. Lamech, who thought himself less criminal than Cain, and therefore expected, that if God would take seven-fold vengeance on any man slaying the first murderer, he would avenge, even to seventyfold, his death,-evidently dreaded death as the punishment of his crime. The command given to Noah* had, perhaps, been partially given before.

Genesis, ix. 5, 6. And 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; at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God made he man.