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ancestors (when there was no law to disobey). As St. Paul states, "Before the law was given sin was not imputed, but nevertheless sin reigned from Adam to Moses." And though sin reigned by disobedience of the law from Moses to Christ, yet the seed of the woman were the chosen people of God. This was bruising the head of the seed of the serpent. No doubt the bruising was a sore grief also. The 1st chapter of the Lamentations of Jeremiah illustrates their condition :

"Behold, O Lord, for I am in distress; my bowels are troubled; mine heart is turned within me; for I have grievously rebelled: abroad the sword bereaveth, at home there is as death. They have heard that I sigh; there is none to comfort me: all mine enemies have heard of my trouble, they are glad that thou hast done it: thou wilt bring the day that thou hast called, and they shall be like unto me. Let all their wickedness come before thee and do unto them as thou hast done unto me for all my transgressions: for my sighs are many, and my heart is faint."Lamen., c. i., v. 20-22.

This was the condition of the gentiles before redemption-the bruising of the head. In the next chapter he laments the destruction and fall of Jerusalem, and the change of position with the seeds-the bruising of the heel, or the after part of time :

"Her gates are sunk into the ground; he hath destroyed and broken her bars; her king and her princes are among the gentiles; the law is no more; her prophets also find no vision from the Lord."-Lamen.,

c. ii, v. 9.

:

"All thine enemies have opened their mouths against thee; they hiss and gnash the teeth: they say, We have swallowed her up certainly this is the day that we looked for; we have found we have seen it. The Lord hath done that which he had devised; he hath fulfilled his word that he had commanded in the days of old he hath thrown down, and hath not pitied: and he hath caused thine enemy to rejoice over thee; he hath set up the horn of thine adversaries."-Lamen., c. ii., v. 16, 17.

Such is the position of the gentiles over the Jews in the present era; and no doubt the latter feel the bruising as keenly as the former did previously. There is one noticeable fact of importance, that the Jews do not war with the gentiles, neither do they war at all, or take any part, whether with Jews by nature or not; whereas the gentiles would always war between themselves, when it was not the purpose of God that they

should punish the Jews. This much cannot be said of the Jews, who are another nation and manner of people.

There is no justification for war; it is ungodly; it resists the progress of Christianity. It is the Anti-Christ, and was already in the world when the Apostles wrote of its coming. It is the abomination of desolation. We lust, and have not; we fight,.and war, and desire to have, and cannot obtain, because we ask amiss. We ask for victory, that we may annex and acquire, to consume it upon our lust; and so do our opponents. We gape as for a camel, and find we have swallowed a gnat. Whatever the unlawful desires of man have been, God has turned them into instruments of punishment. Surely some better occupation may be found for the mind than that demoniacal study how to bring forth into the world weapons of devilish invention for the unholy slaughter of our fellow men; every one of whom without exception Christ died to save, and some one of whom may have been accepted for the world to come. Woe be to him who has harmed even a hair of the head of such an one.

MURDER AND STRANGULATION.

"Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer; and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.

Hereby perceive we the love of and we ought to lay down our

God, because he laid down his life for us lives for the brethren. But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?-1st Epis. John, c. iii., v. 15-17.

Before offering any remarks on the above quotation it will be well to remember that Cain, the first liar and murderer on record, not only hated his brother but murdered him, yet he was not hung nor his life destroyed; furthermore God threatened to take vengeance sevenfold on any one that might kill him. A far greater punishment than death was inflicted; and death would have been a release from a life that must have been burdensome to him. The next murderer, Lamech, thought he was rendering to God and to his family just service in slaying the father of Cain (not Adam), and boasted of it. Moses also committed a murder, first assuring himself that he was unseen; his victim at the time was quarrelling with another man, and he did not interfere with Moses. This appears a cowardly act; and Moses no doubt felt that it was so, for when accidently reminded

of it he fled. Had these murders been committed in the present time the officers of the law would not have rested until both Lamech and Moses had been hung; and the name of Moses would be handed down in a far different light from that in which it now appears. Phineas, the grandson of Aaron, murdered a man and a woman with a javelin. Jacob's two sons slew a whole city to revenge their sister's wrongs. Not one of these man-slayers was hung; on the contrary, most of them were rewarded with the highest favours of God. The woman Jael killed Sisera by driving a nail through his temples to the floor on which he was sleeping-a cold-blooded murder, yet she was not hung; nor was Judith for beheading Holofernes (who was sleeping also), but she was blessed. Other instances might be enumerated if needed. Under the Mosaic dispensation the law commands, "Thou shalt do no murder." We will say, Amen. But the question is, who does commit murder? Are they Jews or gentiles who commit it? I am at a loss to know when the last murder of a Jew was committed by a Jew. With the other races they are too frequent to remember; and this is no marvel, as it began in Cain. A Jew who killed another Jew had a City of Refuge to fly to. But should gentiles murder each other, or a Jew a gentile, or the reverse, neither Cities of Refuge nor foreign lands could shield them from the avenger, so fierce is the thirst for their blood. This is revenge, and not Christianity, or anything like it. The Mosaic law, which has been so long abolished, was a law of justification-an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, &c. Redemption has relieved us from this law; though I know not whether there was ever a necessity to put such a law in force. By what precept do we take vengeance? Not by the abolished law of Moses nor by the law of Christ. When the Jews (not the gentiles), being commanded, "Thou shalt do no murder," refrain from it in consequence, they are evidently more Christianized than are the gentile nations. What part of the Scriptures authorises suspension by the neck for murder? It is stated that hanging and stoning to death were the punishment of adultery between the seeds by Jews marrying strange wives-not for murder. God had made a covenant with Noah after the flood:

"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."-Genesis, c. ix., v. 5, 6.

When this decree was issued there were but four men left alive. A new generation commenced. The former one began by the murder of one brother by the other; yet we read of no command against murder being given previously to the above. It was quite requisite and just that this law should be given on the re-establishment of human society. The words "shedding of blood" are used, but not the word "murder," and as bloodshed might be and often is without committing murder, so (considering the after law of Moses, as "eye for an eye," &c.) according to the manner of the shedding of blood was the manner of the punishment— even to death. We read, And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast or of man's brother will I require the life of man. Supposing a horse, or other favorite animal, destroys the life of a man, and supposing one man destroys another, ought we to hang both the man and the beast, as God requires the life of man from both ? or shall we do unto the image and likeness of God what we refrain from doing unto the beast? or, should they both escape after shedding blood, ought we to pursue them unto death like beasts of prey? This law, as well as the after law given to Moses, is abolished, thank God. We are living under the law of Christ, and not of Moses, or that given to Noah and his sons-one of whom soon received a most bitter curse from his father. If any one deserved to be hung he did, and would have been had he lived and committed himself a few years back, when many were hung for a far less crime. Murder and hanging still go together, while it is supposed that Christianity is becoming more diffused, being much exported-the sooner the better, though the receivers perhaps view it with suspicion under the circumstances. Be this as it may, we know that Christ told his disciples that he came to save men's lives, not to destroy them; therefore hanging can have no sanction from Christianity. God commanded the children of Israel, and them only, Thou shalt do no murder. That they murdered Jesus Christ is very evident, but none of his murderers were hanged. Judas, who betrayed Christ, it is true, went and hanged himself (no one had more right); yet he was not destroyed by it, for something broke (as if for a preordained purpose), and he fell down, and his bowels gushed out. The end of that man surely was written as a 'rebuke and warning, that thenceforth an end should have

been to hanging by virtue of the crucifixion, and that the revenge of the law, formerly by the hand of man, was in the future to be vested in him under whose hands all things are subjected. He says, " Vengeance is mine and I will repay.”

A murder is committed, and given forth to the world painted in the worst colours the mind can conceive. The crime is viewed, but not the cause of it, nor the criminal's state of mind at the time of its commission, arising from some untold cause or mental defect. A murder is not committed for the mere pleasure of some demon (such the murderer is sometimes represented to be), as if it had been his ordinary work, and he were caught at last. Man looks at the act, while God looks at and knows the cause; and that cause should be studied, and if possible removed. The real cause is our natural propensities, inherited from the serpent at the first birth of man, which become ruffled by a manifestation of the same nature in others; and these passions cannot be withstood unless man has received that knowledge from God which he foresaw was required. Without this, man is nothing more than what the Scriptures designates him, whether he takes the life or not, "Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer." Poverty is despised, viewed as a crime, and treated as such, and crime is thereby created and committed. Where hate exists love and charity cannot; and man, without committing the crime of murder, becomes by hate a murderer not only of another but of himself.

"But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him ?"

And what is he without this love, which cannot be received where hate exists and compassion is closed? But man does not desire mere compassion, pity, or charity; he wants employment, and remuneration for his labour to enable him to procure those things for himself and family that God's wisdom provided to satisfy man's especial wants. God never made one simple provision of any kind for the support of man but what he knew man required; and industry ought to procure it for the service of man. This is an undeniable right, that cannot be gainsayed; and whoever denies this right to others becomes thereby a self-murderer. But let us further inquire the cause and effects of murder. It is an important fact that this cause does not exist with both the races and manner of

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