subject is an open question, so that a brief inquiry into the merits of the case may not be uninteresting.
Brethren, ours is preeminently the age of humanitarianism. As Christianity grows older, man seems to realize more and more the nobility of his species, the value of human life, and his duty to preserve it at any cost. Hence these mighty efforts in behalf of the poor and the afflicted. But some are so irreverent as to hint that philanthropy is being overdone; that it is superseding Christianity and all forms of Theism; or at least that it is inverting the order of the two great commandments on which depend the whole law and the prophets. Its methods, too, say they, are not sufficiently discriminating. God's poor, as is fitting, have first claim to its benevolence, but not infrequently the most atrocious criminals — the devil's poor — are treated with mawkish sentimentality, while what may be called the poor devils — the morally mediocre, such as the outcast mother with her nameless babe at her breast, or the luckless itinerant — seek in vain the food and shelter which, were they criminals, they could easily command. However this may be, it is surely no exaggeration to say that the attempt to wrest the Scriptures into conflict with the law of capital punishment is an effort of kindness as vain as it is misplaced. God said to Cain (Gen. iv. 10): "The voice of thy brother's blood crieth to Me from the earth," and who can doubt that the purpose of that cry was not leniency, but vengeance on the guilty fratricide? True, God for obvious reasons did not then and there
