In regard to this Commandment, the Doctrine of the New Church thus teaches: "By the commandment, 'Thou shalt not kill,' is meant, in the natural sense, not to kill a man, and not to inflict on him any wound of which he may die, and also not to mutilate his body; and moreover, not to bring any deadly evil upon his name and fame, since fame and life, with many, go hand in hand. In a wider natural sense, by murders are meant enmity, hatred, and revenge, which breathe death; for murder lies concealed within them: they are murders in intention, if not in act."
Let us consider this commandment, in these various significations of its natural sense, and afterwards let us inquire into its spiritual sense.
To kill—to take away a man's life, which God gave him—to cut and wound a form which the great Creator made, so that the spirit can no longer dwell in it, but flies from it terrified, as it were, into the spiritual world, leaving it bleeding on the ground—Oh! what a crime is this! What deadly and infernal passion in a man's heart, can cause him to do such a thing to his
