rights, but to order all things through himself and with himself to God.
Brethren, suicide is a crime, not only against God, but also against Nature, and society. Every form of animal life, and even the members of the vegetable kingdom, instinctively resist destruction. Nature's primary law is self-preservation. Now, the natural law is simply the eternal law of God reflected in the instincts and judgments of His creatures. The light of the setting sun and its glowing reflection in the western ocean are not more identical than the natural law and the eternal law. Under Nature's guidance animals struggle for existence, nourish themselves, propagate their species, and in general strive to attain their highest material development. But the highest perfection of man, half animal, half angel as he is, involves the subordination of the natural to the supernatural, the making of his material nature into a kind of Jacob's ladder whereby his soul may climb to higher things. But though this elevating of the spirit above the flesh be praiseworthy in the spiritual sense, nothing will justify a man in separating his soul from his body in the literal sense, however exalted his motives. For life is the standing place, the fulcrum of all his efforts upward, and without life he would be as one who should attempt to stand on empty space and move the world. It is an eloquent commentary on the reasoning powers of many that irrational instinct is a safer guide, for brute beasts never destroy themselves, whereas the suicide is led by a mistaken judgment into irreparable misfortune to escape some
