The primitive idea of justice is partly legalized revenge and partly
expiation by sacrifice. It works out from both sides in the notion that
two blacks make a white, and that when a wrong has been done, it should
be paid for by an equivalent suffering. It seems to the Philistine
majority a matter of course that this compensating suffering should be
inflicted on the wrongdoer for the sake of its deterrent effect on
other would-be wrongdoers; but a moment's reflection will show that this
utilitarian application corrupts the whole transaction. For example, the
shedding of innocent blood cannot be balanced by the shedding of guilty
blood. Sacrificing a criminal to propitiate God for the murder of one of
his righteous servants is like sacrificing a mangy sheep or an ox with
the rinderpest: it calls down divine wrath instead of appeasing it.
In doing it we offer God as a sacrifice the gratification of our own
revenge and the protection of our own lives without cost to ourselves;
and cost to ourselves is the essence of sacrifice and expiation.
However much the Philistines have succeeded in confusing these things in
practice, they are to the Salvationist sense distinct and even contrary.
The Baronet's cousin in Dickens's novel, who, perplexed by the failure
of the police to discover the murderer of the baronet's solicitor, said
"Far better hang wrong fellow than no fellow," was not only expressing
a very common sentiment, but trembling on the brink of the rarer
Salvationist opinion that it is much better to hang the wrong fellow:
that, in fact, the wrong fellow is the right fellow to hang.
The point is a cardinal one, because until we grasp it not only does
historical Christianity remain unintelligible to us, but those who do
not care a rap about historical Christianity may be led into the mistake
of supposing that if we discard revenge, and treat murderers exactly
as God treated Cain: that is, exempt them from punishment by putting a
brand on them as unworthy to be sacrificed, and let them face the world
as best they can with that brand on them, we should get rid both of
punishment and sacrifice. It would not at all follow: on the contrary,
the feeling that there must be an expiation of the murder might quite
possibly lead to our putting some innocent person--the more innocent the
better--to a cruel death to balance the account with divine justice.