sense than any individual is. That the State is, in a peculiar sense, a divine power, is clear from the nature of the obedience demanded -not submission to force, but the intelligent, moral subjection we owe to God; "ye must needs be subject not only for wrath, but for conscience sake." The doctrine of this passage, then, unless we reduce it to mere trifling, is, that the State is in a peculiar sense a divine institution, which God has ordained for special ends, endowed with rights and powers which the individual may not exercise, and subjected to laws of higher authority than any expression of the popular will. Second. Our last point is, "that, as 'the minister of God,' the State or magistrate is charged with the execution of God's vengeance on outward crimes." "He is an avenger (not 'revenger') for (the execution of) wrath to him that doeth evil." The word here translated "avenger," is another part of the same word which, in the previous verses, is rendered "vengeance." The same essential idea, therefore, must be conveyed by it in both places. To use a leading term with totally irreconcilable meanings in two sentences of the same passage, must produce not instruction, but utter confusion of thought. We found that the vengeance claimed by God in the nineteenth verse expressed retribution, the punishment of offences on grounds of mere guilt, or intrinsic ill-desert, as distinguished from punishing on grounds of expediency. Respect for the apostle's consistency in the use of language constrains us to attach the same fundamental idea to the same word, when it occurs in verse 4th; and thus to regard the magistrate, not as the minister of a mere human expediency, but of a divine retribution or moral justice, and as punishing crimes, not because they are injurious, but because they are wicked. It is not as an individual, or by virtue of any right inherent in himself, or merely delegated to him by other individuals, that he sustains this moral character; but as the "minister of God," ordained for that very purpose, "he is an avenger for wrath." The avenging power of the State is not the creature of man, but the gift of God. This T relation of the State to the Divine government, as its minister, identifies the two in the principle on which they are based that of retribution. There is the same power in both, the difference between them is not in kind, but in degree. They have one centre, but the State is only a segment of the immeasurable circle swept by the Divine administration. The one has to do with spiritual states, both directly and as matured into acts. The other is also concerned with spiritual states, but only as they have borne fruit in outward criminal deeds. It is an avenger for wrath "to him that doeth evil." Into the unseen spiritual world of thought, purpose, and feeling, it cannot make entrance, except as conducted by the light of visible acts. But its province is not confined to outward acts of crime. It has to do with these as proofs of a criminal state of moral feeling. Hence the mere fact of a material violation of law having occurred, is not sufficient to condemn; the intention must be carefully ascertained, and, on the same ground, extenuating or aggravating circumstances are adduced to aid in determining the precise moral state from which the violation of law proceeded. But, however depraved or criminal the moral state may be, unless the evidence of it be furnished in deeds of criminality, the State may not interpose to punish. Defect of valid proof and the danger of perpetrating injustice bound its jurisdiction. The single passage of Scripture thus reviewed, yields us most decisive and valuable results. It refuses to the victim of injustice the office of its judge and avenger, and invites him by patience and love "to bereave it of its bad influence and receive its good;" it arrays the administration of God with the awful majesty of retributive power; and it raises the earthly State to the honours of a divine ministry, and challenges for it the reverence and loyalty due to it, as the rightful dispenser of heaven's moral justice on the crimes of men. It thus reconciles private duty with public safety; it gives full play to the graces and charities of Christianity, without baring the bosom of society to the stroke of the destroyer, or inviting the aggressions of lawless passions on their defenceless prey. To repeat our doctrine-"the vengeance denied to the individual is claimed for God, and is by him intrusted to the State as his earthly minister." We have only to point out the bearing of this argument on the question of capital punishment. Of course, the possession of avenging power by the State does not of itself prove that the State may use that power to take away life. But it is the key to the whole position; and this gained, the rest must be surrendered. In the first place, it disables all the objections grounded on the duty of Christian forbearance and forgiveness, for it proves the State to be under a different law from the individual. In the second place, it introduces into punishments a higher element than expediency, even retribution; and puts the entire question on the following footing:-The State has the right, and is under a divine obligation, to inflict on criminals such punishments as their crimes deserve. The only link now wanting is the murderer deserves to be put to death. And who doubts this? It is the instinct of universal humanity, and the voice of all history. It is the first impulse of every heart, as it listens to the tale of blood, and the irresistible conviction of the murderer himself, as the poet has said, " And some, we know, when they, by wilful act, * From a series of fourteen sonnets on the punishment of death, by W. Wordsworth, in which our great philosophical poet, whose verse is as conspicuous for thoughtful pity as for moral purity, has considered the subject on prudential, philosophical, and religious grounds, and furnished, "though he speaks in numbers," a complete vindication of the power of society to inflict the extreme penalty. They are highly worthy of attention by all whom this question interests. VOL. I.-No. 4. 22 It is the confession of the abolitionist himself, who, in railing at it as antichristian, owns it to be natural; and it is a sentiment which _ Christianity does not repudiate, but wisely regulates. We are therefore entitled to the following summary of our argument:-The State is bound to punish crimes according to their moral desert; but the murderer deserves to be put to death*-therefore the State must punish murder with death. This view also relieves the Christian mind of its only serious difficulty-that involved in "cutting a sinner off in his sins." The believer in revelation knows that it enters into the dispensation of Providence to cut off sinners in their guilty career, and that by various instruments and means; when, therefore, he regards the State, as ordained by Providence, to be the minister of God's justice on earth, and responsible for the execution of that justice on criminals, he will acknowledge that "it is as false a humility, as it is a false humanity, and a false piety, for man to refuse to be the instrument" of inflicting death on the sinner whose crimes have merited that doom, and that man is simply responsible for duty "Leaving the final issue in His hand, Whose goodness knows no change, whose love is sure; With the great mass of our readers, the clear decisions of Scripture will be conclusive, and its sure guidance gratefully accepted on questions where the counsels of expediency must ever be uncertain and insufficient. Others, who disown the Bible as an arbiter of social questions, and walk only in the light of experience, may find much in the present condition of society to arrest their impatience for the abridgment of the State's punitive power. When crime is daily swelling its ranks with numbers unprecedented, and bursts forth in forms that surpass in horror all previous examples-when every successive plan of criminal reform has proved an unqualified failure, and the entire harvest that has been gathered from these labours of philanthropy is the conviction universally acknowledged, that both our theory and practice in the treatment of criminals are utterly wrong-when thus all our secondary punishments seem to be losing their deterring influence, and are powerless for reforming, it is surely not the time for the surrender of that penalty which, whatever may be the evils incidental to its exercise, is the one in our code which has the strongest power to strike a salutary terror into depraved souls. * [The Scriptures demand capital punishment in the case of murder. Immediately after the flood, God delegated this authority to His creatures; and as long as men are wicked enough to commit murder, the same principles require its punishment in the same way, to the end of time. (Gen. ix. 6) The command to take the life of the murderer was given to Noah centuries before the Levitical dispensation. It is an unrepealed command. There has been no abrogation of this authority under the Christian dispensation. Magistrates who "are ordained of God," "do not bear the sword in vain." JOY, REST, AND PIETY. VITRINGA remarks in one of his works that the proper exercises for the Sabbath are JOY, REST, and PIETY. Joy is an emotion peculiarly consistent with the origin and purposes of the Christian Sabbath. On the first day of the week, the Saviour, arising from the dead, "led captivity captive," and ascended "to his Father and our Father, to his God and our God." "This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it." It commemorates a joyful event; it establishes joyful privileges; it brings joyful promises; it is typical of a joyful Sabbath in heaven. The Lord's day has always been considered a festival in the church. Fasting has never been customary on this day; but on the contrary, all its associations are of spiritual gladness. The Puritans indeed erred in throwing so much austerity around the Sabbath. This was the natural error of men who had witnessed in their native land the dreadful evils of the "Book of Sports," in which games and merry-making on Sunday were enjoined by law. The true spirit becoming the day is a joyful one, but not a spirit of profanity and thoughtlessness. Religious joy is one of the most elevating and inspiring elements of the immortality of the redeemed; and it is an exercise of the heart which peculiarly honours the Lord's day. "I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord." Whether in the sanctuary, or at home, let the light of the Sabbath shine upon grateful, adoring, rejoicing Christians. REST enters into the very idea of the Sabbath. "For in six days God made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it." God is liberal in allowing man six days for work, and he is benevolent in requiring him to rest on the seventh. This rest is not only commanded by the authority, but is commended by the example of God. The whole of one day in seven is claimed by the Creator for the special purposes of religion. Whatever secular employment is therefore practised, unless it be strictly of necessity or for mercy, is a desecration of holy time. Every encroachment of labour is unhallowed theft, and it will also be found a godless gain. The laws of the State should protect, instead of desecrating the Sabbath. It is among every man's inalienable rights that one day in seven should be appropriated to rest. The wants of the body, as well as of the soul, require it. The mortal and the immortal parts of our nature equally derive benefit from Sabbatical intervention. The cultivation of PIETY is evidently the appropriate duty of the Sabbath. It is "the day of the Lord thy God;" and its hours are to be specially devoted to the meditations of divine truth, to prayer and praise, and to the personal relations and duties of the soul to the Creator, Preserver and Redeemer. As if to deprive man for ever of the vain and wicked excuse that he has no time to attend to the concerns of religion, the seventh part of life has been allotted to these very things. All the arrangements of nature and Providence bring Redemption to view. The Sabbath is God's testimony to the worth of the soul. This day is now distinctly associated with the work of the risen Saviour in addition to its original claims of awe. There are, therefore, more motives to religion inherent in the Christian than the Jewish Sabbath. And yet some Christians in our own and other times, have been favourable to lowering its religious demands. The continental churches of Europe have failed to devote the whole Sabbath to the cultivation of piety. Having never been emancipated from the snare of Popery in this particular respect, they have suffered the most serious loss and punishment by their neglect of the proper observance of the Lord's day. The experience of every believer testifies to the importance and value of an uncontaminated Sabbath-one devoted to the exclusive cultivation of the spirit of religion and the practice of its incumbent duties. In the expressive language of Wilberforce: "O, what a blessed day is the Sabbath, which allows us a precious interval wherein to pause-to come out from the thickets of worldly concerns, and give ourselves up to heavenly and spiritual objects! Observation and my own experience have convinced me that there is a special blessing on the right employment of these intervals. "One of their prime objects, in my judgment, is to strengthen our impression of invisible things, and to induce a habit of living much under their influences. O what a blessed thing is the Sabbath, interposed between the waves of worldly business, like the divine path of the Israelites through Jordan! Blessed be God, who has appointed the Sabbath, and interposed the seasons of recollection. It is a blessed thing to have the Sabbath devoted to God. There is nothing in which I would commend you to be more strictly conscientious, than in keeping the Sabbath day." AN OPEN GATE. A FEW days ago a gentleman, in narrating his personal experience during his recent sickness, remarked that it had been attended with very acute and distressing pain. In his moments of agony, he said that he blessed God for the prospect of quitting the tabernacle of flesh-that he looked forward with joy to "the open gate through which death allowed the believer to depart from the body and to go to Christ." Reader, the gate will soon be open; and will you be glad to pass through it into glory? |