By Rev. Hugh Martin D.D.
God has imbued responsible man with a natural and profound horror of shedding his brother’s blood. Nor is this confined to those who are in possession of the Scriptures, those holy writings in which God has said — at the very constitution of the world and of society, on re-arranging that constitution after it had been obliterated by the flood — “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” It is a feeling that has gone down all time, with all the families of Noah; and that, whether the covenant with Noah — whether the Scripture or that special command in it — has gone down to them or not. However much extreme hardening, through indulgence in sin, may sear the conscience, and go far, apparently, to obliterate this horror at the guilt of murder, it is more proper to say that such searing and hardening rather overpowers than obliterates it. For it abideth still; and it affords one of a multitude of harmonies between the religion of the natural conscience of man and the religion of the revealed will of God. For, — whatever may be said by some who would seem to seek a character for good feeling higher than God Himself — as it is apart from and prior to the Bible, or any precept there, that man instinctively abhors the sin of murder; so, it was prior to any particular dispensation — any Mosaic economy, for instance, or
A close-up photograph of a person’s hand holding a small yellow object, possibly a piece of paper or a small book, against a dark background. The hand is positioned in the lower right corner of the image, with the thumb and index finger gripping the yellow object. The lighting is dramatic, with the hand and the object being the primary light sources against the dark background.
A close-up photograph of a person’s hand holding a small yellow object, possibly a piece of paper or a small book, against a dark background.
Jewish theocracy — and as applied to all lands and all times, that God, in starting the world anew in the ark-saved family of the patriarch, gave forth the unrepealed command, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” Nor should it be forgotten, as sufficient for ever to silence the advocates for the abolition of capital punishment, that God has not only given an unrepealed command which He might have been pleased to rest on His own authority and will alone, but He has condescended to give the ground and reason of it; and so long as both the command remains unrepealed and the reason remains a fact, so long is the proposed abolition of capital punishment a daring insult against the Most High. God hath given us a reason why the shedding of man’s blood must be avenged by the murderer’s death — “for in the image of God made He man.” And until this truth becomes untrue, that is, until man ceases to be a free, intelligent, responsible being — fallen, indeed, and in a vast multitude of cases, alas! unrenewed, yet still responsible, intelligent and free — capital punishment, both by God’s commanding will and by God’s assigned reason, is the murderer’s doom. And nature and reason sanction the sentence.