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a few murderers preserves the lives of thousands, who would otherwise be murdered. The question for the legislator to decide is, whether, in view of the retributions of the future world, he ought to leave the community in such a defenseless state, that multitudes of people will be suddenly hurried into eternity, by the hand of violence; or, on the other hand, prevent most of these sudden deaths, by the capital punishment of the murderer. And he should reflect, too, that death by the hand of the executioner, is, in this country, less sudden than most other deaths. It has no claim to be called a sudden death. When the murderer is arrested and bound over for trial, he has his first warning to prepare for eternity; when he is convicted and sentenced to be executed, he receives another, which points him forward to a definite period when he must die, affording him ample opportunity, in the interval, for every religious duty. It is hence far from evident that imprisonment, which is propo sed as a substitute for death, is more favorable than capital punish ment, to the spiritual interests of the criminal. The contrary seems to be the fact, judging both from observation and from the nature of man. Who that knows his own heart, can doubt that, if he were condemned to death for the crime of murder, he would address him. self to a preparation for another world, with more serious earnestness, than under a sentence of mere imprisonment?

Another objection of a moral and religious nature, against capital punishment, is founded on the duty of forgiving injuries. The precepts which inculcate this duty, are said to be binding on society as well as on individuals. Society must not, it is contended, return evil for evil. But it is obvious that if this class of precepts forbid capital punishment, they forbid also every other kind of

punishment. The nature of revenge does not lie in the amount of evil inflicted. We may revenge ourselves, contrary to the precepts of Christianity, by a light blow with the hand, by a significant shake of the finger, by a sneer. To suppose, therefore, that these precepts are addressed to the State as well as to the individual citizen, is laying the axe at the root of civil government. It is even a plain denial of the right of God to govern His creatures, by the infliction of evil for evil; for if society cannot punish a wrong doer without malice, neither can God. But there is manifestly no incompatibility between the infliction of civil penalties and a spirit of kindness, of good will, of lively compassion toward the criminal, on the part of the makers and administrators of the law. Benevolence is not a blind impulse, but an intelligent regard for happiness. It impels us to inflict evil for a greater good, not otherwise attainable; it steadies the hand of the surgeon; it gives firmness, in a just war, to the voice of command which may extinguish the lives of thousands; it presides in the discipline of the family; it is "a terror to evil doers" in the State; it shines most luminously in the retributions of eternity. Benevo lence looks to the good of all, to the greatest good, and perceiving that the peace and security of the community at large will be sacrificed to the violence of a murderer, unless he is cut off, it calls for his blood. And if it should be inquired, what then is the meaning and application of the precepts against rendering evil for evil, the answer is, they are not meant to apply to the cognizance which society takes of crimes, nor to seeking redress for injuries before tribunals of justice; but are directed solely against the intolerable evil of that state of society in which each individual presumes to be judge, jury and executioner, in all cases to which he is a party; and they also

inculcate the virtues of forbearance and forgiveness.

It will be perceived that all these denials of the moral right of capital punishment, as well as the absurd notion that the design of punishment is the reformation of the criminal, involve a denial of the lawfulness of civil government. They all result in this, that man ought to be left to the restraints of conscience and religion alone; that to restrain him from crimes, or to punish his crimes, is a usurpation of the authority of his Maker. This conclusion is sufficiently startling, we would hope, to supersede the necessity of any further notice of them.

We therefore turn the attention of the reader to the Scriptural evidence of the right or lawfulness of inflicting the punishment of death for the crime of murder.

The Mosaic code recognizes and establishes the propriety of capital punishment. The very man to whom the sixth commandment was given, written by the finger of God on a table of stone, thought it unquestionably proper to inflict the punishment of death for various crimes. And what is still more decisive, God himself expressly instructed Moses, Ex. xxi: 12-17, that murder, smiting one's father or mother, man-stealing, and several other crimes, Ex. xxii: 18, 19, should be capitally punished. The Mosaic code, it is true, was made for the Hebrews, and as such is not binding on other nations. Still it establishes the essential morality of capital punishment; it shows that the sixth commandment is not prohibitory of it, and that human life is not in its nature inviolable; that, in short, God may require the infliction of the punishment of death for the good of society. And what was then a desirable provision of the penal code, may, for aught that appears, be equally conducive to the public good in every age and country. It is remarkable that the ob

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jections now urged against capital punishment might have been urged with equal or greater force during the Mosaic dispensation. The punishment of death then as well as now, deprived the criminal of any further opportunity of repentance; and as it was the practice of the Hebrews to inflict the punishment immediately after conviction, he had even less opportunity to prepare for death. Capital punishment was then as well as now irrevocable, admitting of no redress in case of its unjust infliction. Then imprisonment offered itself as a substitute for the punishment of death, and was as likely as now to be an equally efficient protection to the community. Then, if ever, capital punishment was inconsistent with the law of benevolence to the injurious, Lev. xix: 18.

The supposition by which it is sought to weaken the force of this argument, namely, that the Mosaic code, the only code of civil law which God himself has given to a people, is founded on a defective morality, is at least sufficiently astounding to merit a reluctant assent. It is said that the morality of the Old Testament is inferior to that of the New, and that capital punishment is a part of this defective morality. But the truth is, the system of morality contained in the ancient Scriptures, is the same which is taught only with more explicitness in the New Testament. It is a grand standing error of fanatics, that Christ in his sermon on the mount inculcates a more elevated morality than that of the decalogue. We need not enter at length into the proof of the identity of the moral codes of the two dispensations; it is enough that Christ has expressly declared that supreme love to God and impartial love to man, the sum of all human obligations, are required by Moses and the prophets. The argument in favor of capital punishment from the place it held in the penal code of

Moses, cannot therefore be set aside by the assumption that that code was framed on the basis of a lax morality. Another argument, however, on which writers on this side of the question place far more reliance than on that which we have drawn from the Mosaic code, remains to be noticed. It is founded on Genesis ix: 5, 6, where the infliction of capital punishment for murder seems to be sanctioned by our Maker. The passage is this: "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." This is addressed to Noah and his whole posterity-to men of all nations to the end of time. It is not, as some have dreamed, a mere prediction of the violent death of murderers, but a requirement of God, a demand which He makes on society to deliver up the murderer to death, for the crime of shedding the blood of man. This passage is decisive in favor of capital punishment, unless in a subsequent age the authority thus given was withdrawn. But in no part of the Bible is capital punishment prohibited. The only pretense is, that the spirit of the New Testament is opposed to it. But the spirit of divine legislation is invariably the same; and were it not, it is a correct rule that a law remains in force until it is repealed.

We turn, however, to the New Testament. It may be a source of satisfaction to those who look with peculiar reverence on the Christian Scriptures to know that even there the propriety of capital punishment is recognized. The declaration in Rom. xiii: 4, that the magistrate beareth not the SWORD in vain, and other parallel passages, are conclusive intimations of this right. An instrument of death is used as an Vol. I.

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appropriate badge of the civil ruler. He bears the sword not in vain but for good. Can this imply any thing less than that he is justly invested with the power of life and death, and in the exercise of that power inflicts the punishment of death on malefactors for the good of society? Other intimations to the same effect. might be referred to, were it not more likely to weary than inform the reader.

We are not prepared however to say that we regard capital punishment for murder as of absolute and invariable obligation: so that it can never be right to exercise the pardoning power in the case of a murderer. The fact that the magistrate bears the sword by divine appointment only makes it plain that he may rightfully inflict the punishment of death in defense of society, and not that he must inflict it upon all murderers. And if we turn to the argument from the Old Testament, it is manifest that the existence of this penalty in the Mosaic code, proves only that the punishment of death may properly be inflicted if the good of society can be promoted or secured by it. In any subsequent age if it can be shown that circumstances have so far changed that this mode of punishment can safely be superseded by a milder penalty, there is nothing in that ancient example to forbid a departure from it. The only question is, whether the instructions given to Noah are to be considered as a rule of civil government of absolute, permanent, and invariable obligation. If the passage admits of exceptions in particular cases; that is, if society may for reasons exercise the pardoning power towards individual murderers, then the rule is not of invariable obligation, but only a general rule. This it appears to us is the fact. For that exceptions to the execution of known murderers may lawfully be made hardly admits of a doubt. The

good of society seems to require it for the better conviction of gangs of murderers, by holding out the promise of safety to any one who will turn state's evidence against his accomplices; and it certainly allows it where murder has been committed by a large body of men: the execution of a part of them answering every purpose of the law. Other cases may be supposed in

which the exercise of clemency may be compatible with public safety, and serviceable to the state. We freely admit that the evil of too frequent and undiscriminating pardons is the tendency of the age; yet the other extreme of making the execution of every murderer without exception a matter of con science and moral obligation, seems to us to have no support.

WINTER.

STERN winter cometh, with his freezing breath,
And brow all lowering, and black with storm;
He shaketh from his locks the blights of death,
And darkness mantleth round his awful form.
He walks in terror on the deep, dark sea,

And with him go his ministers of wrath,
Which, sweeping onward, uncontrolled and free,
Fling fearful ruin round their rapid path.
He sitteth snow-robed on an icy throne,

That rises beetling o'er the northern pole;
He looketh-lo! the world is all his own,
And joy shoots wildly through his horrid soul.

But the spring will come

In the glad young year,
And the soft green fields

Fresh flowers shall wear;
And the blue skies laugh,
And the earth be gay,
And the sun go forth

On his joyous way;
And the red-breast chirp,

And the sky-lark sing,

And the soul of the world

Shall be glad in the spring.

Then weep not naiads, o'er your gentle streams,
That lie all cold, and stiffened 'neath his breath;
For soon the sun will fling abroad his beams,

And melt away the influence of Death.
But sing the death-song o'er the perished year,
Ye lovely daughters of the untrodden plain;
Bear, slowly bear along his darkening bier,

And deck it with the lily, cold and pale:
Chant, slowly chant the low, funereal dirge,
Sad, solemn, deep, like ocean's lumbering surge.

*

*

The dead year sleepeth in his new-made grave,
And o'er him rolleth darkly the eternal wave.

UNIVERSALISM EXAMINED, RENOUNCED, AND EXPOSED.*

"THERE is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth." There is joy likewise among the redeemed on earth whenever one is rescued from the enslaved host of Satan and numbered among the free sons of God; and their joy is great in proportion to the completeness and apparent hopelessness of his former thraldom. This truth was illustrated about two years since, when it became known to the Christian community in New England, that Matthew Hale Smith, who had been a popular preacher of Universalism at Hartford and Salem, had renounced the destructive errors of that sect, and by divine grace had been led, as was hoped, to receive and obey the truth as it is in Jesus, and to devote himself to the upbuilding of that faith, which for twelve years he had destroyed.

After the agitation in Mr. Smith's mind incident to such an entire change in his views, and to the peeuliar internal and external conflict which he had experienced, had subsided, his Christian friends, thinking that his practical knowledge of the system and the influence of Universalism, would enable him most effectually to expose it, advised and requested him to deliver a series of lectures for that object. According ly he lectured in Hartford, New Haven, Boston, Salem, and many other places, to crowded and interested assemblies, and with great effect.

We were among those who listened to those lectures, and our wishes, and doubtless the wishes of all the friends of evangelical truth, have been gratified by their publication.

* Universalism Examined, Renounced,

Exposed; in a series of Lectures, embracing the experience of the author during a ministry of twelve years, and the testimony of Universalist ministers to the dread ful moral tendency of their faith; by MATTHEW HALE SMITH. Boston, 1842. 12mo. pp. 396.

From the moment of Mr. Smith's decided renunciation of Universalism, he was made the object of bitter and unscrupulous hostility by his former associates and friends. His private character was assailed, his lectures interrupted by Universalist ministers and others, his person exposed to violence, and his family insulted. The foul-mouthed organs of that abusive sect set upon him in full bay, and all sorts of reproach and calumny were heaped upon him. He was pronounced a liar, a knave, and a madman. Taking advantage of an alienation of mind which he manifested when under the combined influence of disease and great mental anxiety and agitation, their most common charge was that he was insane. But he has given what, to them at least, should be convincing evidence of his sanity. He has written an exposure and refutation of their system of delusion and sophistry, which they cannot answer, or evade, or withstand.

These lectures are seven in number, with an address to Christians warning them against various artifi ces of Universalists. The style is perspicuous, and easy, and sometimes forcible, though somewhat dif fuse and repetitious, owing probably to their being prepared for delivery to a popular audience, rather than for the press. Even in the most argumentative parts, the work partakes so largely of the nature of a record of personal experience-the author expresses himself with so unaffected a sense both of his former bondage to error and of his emancipation by the truth-that the reader's attention, kept alive by sympathy with the writer, rarely flags for a moment. The author thus announces his object:

"The design of the present course of lectures, is to present the reasons which

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