Eversley. Quinquagesima Sunday, 1872.
Genesis ix. 1, 3, 4, 5, 6. "And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said
unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. . . .
Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you . . . But flesh
with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat. And
surely your blood of your lives will I require: at the hand of every
beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every
man's brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man's
blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he
man."
This is God's blessing on mankind. This is our charter from God, who
made and rules this earth. This is the end and duty of our mortal life:-
-to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, and subdue it. But
is that all? Is there no hint in this blessing of God of something more
than our mortal life--something beyond our mortal life? Surely there is.
Those words--"in the image of God made He man," must mean, if they mean
anything, that man can, if he will but be a true man, share the eternal
life of God. But I will not speak of that to-day, but rather of a
question about his mortal life in this world, which is this:--What is the
reason why man has a right over the lives of animals? why he may use them
for his food? and at the same time, what is the reason why he has not the
same right over the lives of his fellow-men? why he may not use them for
food?
It is this--that "in the image of God made He man." Man is made in the
image and likeness of God, therefore he is a sacred creature; a creature,
not merely an animal, and the highest of all animals, only cunninger than
all animals, more highly organised, more delicately formed than all
animals; but something beyond an animal. He is in the likeness of God,
therefore he is consecrated to God. He is the one creature on earth whom
God, so far as we know, is trying to make like Himself. Therefore,
whosoever kills a man, sins not only against that man, nor against
society: he sins against God. And God will require that man's blood at
the hand of him who slays him. But how? At the hand of every beast will
He require it, and at the hand of every man.
What that first part of the law means I cannot tell. How God will
require from the lion, or the crocodile, or the shark, who eats a human
being, the blood of their victims, is more than I can say. But this I
can say--that the feeling, not only of horror and pity, but of real rage
and indignation, with which men see (what God grant you never may see) a
wild beast kill a man, is a witness in man's conscience that the text is
true somehow, though how we know not. I received a letter a few weeks
since from an officer, a very remarkable person, in which he described
his horror and indignation at seeing a friend of his struck down and
eaten by a tiger, and how, when next day he stood over what had been but
the day before a human being, he looked up to heaven, and kept repeating
the words of the text, "in the image of God made He man," in rage and
shame, and almost accusing God for allowing His image to be eaten by a
brute beast. It shook, for the moment, his faith in God's justice and
goodness. That man was young then, and has grown calmer and wiser now,
and has regained a deeper and sounder faith in God. But the shock, he
said, was dreadful to him. He felt that the matter was not merely
painful and pitiable, but that it was a wrong and a crime; and on the
faith of this very text, a wrong and a crime I believe it to be, and one
which God knows how to avenge and to correct when man cannot. Somehow--
for He has ways of which we poor mortals do not dream--at the hand of
every beast will He require the blood of man.
But more; at the hand of every man will He require it. And how? The
text tells us, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be
shed: for in the image of God made He man." Now, I do not doubt but
that the all-seeing God, looking back on what had most probably happened
on this earth already, and looking forward to what would happen, and
happens, alas! too often now, meant to warn men against the awful crime
of cannibalism, of eating their fellow-men as they would eat an animal.
By so doing, they not only treated their fellow-men as beasts, but they
behaved like beasts themselves. They denied that their victim was made
in the likeness of God; they denied that they were made in the likeness
of God; they willingly and deliberately put on the likeness of beasts,
and as beasts they were to perish. Now, this is certain, that savages
who eat men--and alas! there are thousands even now who do so--usually
know in their hearts that they are doing wrong. As soon as their
consciences are the least awakened, they are ashamed of their
cannibalism; they lie about it, try to conceal it; and as soon as God's
grace begins to work on them, it is the very first sin that they give up.
And next, this is certain, that there is a curse upon it. No cannibal
people, so far as I can find, have ever risen or prospered in the world;
and the cannibal peoples now-a-days, and for the last three hundred
years, have been dying out. By their own vices, diseases, and wars, they
perish off the face of the earth, in the midst of comfort and plenty;
and, in spite of all the efforts of missionaries, even their children and
grand-children, after giving up the horrid crime, and becoming
Christians, seem to have no power of living and increasing, but dwindle
away, and perish off the earth. Yes, God's laws work in strange and
subtle ways; so darkly, so slowly, that the ungodly and sinners often
believe that there are no laws of God, and say--"Tush, how should God
perceive it? Is there knowledge in the Most High?" But the laws work,
nevertheless, whether men are aware of them or not. "The mills of God
grind slowly," but sooner or later they grind the sinner to powder.
And now I will leave this hateful subject and go on to another, on which
I am moved to speak once and for all, because it is much in men's minds
just now--I mean what is vulgarly called "capital punishment," the
punishing of murder by death. Now the text, which is the ancient
covenant of God with man, speaks very clearly on this point. "Whosoever
sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." Man is made in
the likeness of God. That is the ground of our law about murder, as it
is the ground of all just and merciful law; that gives man his right to
slay the murderer; that makes it his duty to slay the murderer. He has
to be jealous of God's likeness, and to slay, in the name of God, the man
who, by murder, outrages the likeness of God in himself and in his
victim.
You all know that there is now-a-days a strong feeling among some persons
about capital punishment; that there are those who will move heaven and
earth to interfere with the course of justice, and beg off the worst of
murderers, on any grounds, however unreasonable, fanciful, even unfair;
simply because they have a dislike to human beings being hanged. I
believe, from long consideration, that these persons' strange dislike
proceeds from their not believing sufficiently that man is made in the
image of God. And, alas! it proceeds, I fear, in some of them, from not
believing in a God at all--believing, perhaps, in some mere maker of the
world, but not in the living God which Scripture sets forth. For how
else can they say, as I have known some say, that capital punishment is
wrong, because "we have no right to usher a man into the presence of his
Maker."
Into the presence of his Maker! Why, where else is every man, you and I,
heathen and Christian, bad and good, save in the presence of his Maker
already? Do we not live and move and have our being in God? Whither can
we go from His spirit, or whither can we flee from His presence? If we
ascend into heaven, He is there. If we go down to hell He is there also.
And if the law puts a man to death, it does not usher him into the
presence of his Maker, for he is there already. It simply says to him,
"God has judged you on earth, not we. God will judge you in the next
world, not we. All we know is, that you are not fit to live in this
world. All our duty is to send you out of it. Where you will go in the
other world is God's matter, not ours, and the Lord have mercy on your
soul."
And this want of faith in a living God lies at the bottom of another
objection. We are to keep murderers alive in order to convert and
instruct and amend them. The answer is, We shall be most happy to amend
anybody of any fault, however great: but the experience of ages is that
murderers are past mending; that the fact of a man's murdering another is
a plain proof that he has no moral sense, and has become simply a brute
animal Our duty is to punish not to amend, and to say to the murderer,
"If you can be amended; God will amend you, and so have mercy on your
soul. God must amend you, if you are to be amended. If God cannot amend
you, we cannot. If God will not amend you, certainly we cannot force Him
to do so, if we kept you alive for a thousand years." That would seem
reasonable, as well as reverent and faithful to God. But men now-a-days
fancy that they love their fellow creatures far better than God loves
them, and can deal far more wisely and lovingly with them than God is
willing to deal. Of these objections I take little heed. I look on them
as merely loose cant, which does not quite understand the meaning of its
own words, and I trust to sound, hard, English common sense to put them
aside.
But there is another objection to capital punishment, which we must deal
with much more respectfully and tenderly; for it is made by certain good
people, people whom we must honour, though we differ from them, for no
set of people have done more (according to their numbers) for education,
for active charity, and for benevolence, and for peace and good will
among the nations of the earth. And they say, you must not take the life
of a murderer, just because he is made in God's image. Well, I should
have thought that God Himself was the best judge of that. That, if God
truly said that man was made in His image, and said, moreover, as it were
at the same moment, that, therefore, whoso sheds man's blood, by man
shall his blood be shed--our duty was to trust God, to obey God, and to
do our duty against the murderer, however painful to our feelings it
might be. But I believe these good people make their mistake from
forgetting this; that if the murderer be made in God's image and
likeness, so is the man whom he murders; and so also is the jury who
convict him, the judge who condemns him, and the nation (the society of
men) for whom they act.
And this, my dear friends, brings us to the very root of the meaning of
law. Man has sense to make laws (which animals cannot do), just because
he is made in the likeness of God, and has the sense of right and wrong.
Man has the right to enforce laws, to see right done and wrong punished,
just because he is made in the likeness of God. The laws of a country,
as far as they are just and righteous, are the copy of what the men of
that country have found out about right and wrong, and about how much
right they can get done, and how much wrong punished. So, just as the
men of a country are (in spite of all their sins) made in the likeness of
God, so the laws of a country (in spite of all their defects) are a copy
of God's will, as to what men should or should not do. And that, and no
other, is the true reason why the judge or magistrate has authority over
either property, liberty, or life. He is God's servant, the servant of
Christ, who is King of this land and of all lands, and of all
governments, and all kings and rulers of the earth. He sits there in
God's name, to see God's will done, as far as poor fallible human beings
can get it done. And, because he is, not merely as a man, but, by his
special authority, in the likeness of God, who has power over life and
death, therefore he also, as far as his authority goes, has power over
life and death. That is my opinion, and that was the opinion of St.
Paul. For what does he say--and say not (remember always) of Christian
magistrates in a Christian country, but actually of heathen Roman
magistrates? "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For
there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.
Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God:
and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation." Thus spoke
out the tenderest-hearted, most Christ-like human being, perhaps, who
ever trod this earth, who, in his intense longing to save sinners,
endured a life of misery and danger, and finished it by martyrdom. But
there was no sentimentality, no soft indulgence in him. He knew right
from wrong; common sense from cant; duty from public opinion; and divine
charity from the mere cowardly dislike of witnessing pain, not so much
because it pains the person punished, as because it pains the spectator.
He knew that Christ was King of kings, and what Christ's kingdom was
like. He had discovered the divine and wonderful order of men and
angels. He saw that one part of that order was--"the soul that sinneth,
it shall die."
But some say that capital punishment is inconsistent with the mild
religion of Christ--the religion of mercy and love. "The mild religion
of Christ!" Do these men know of Whom they talk? Do they know that, if
the Bible be true, the God who said, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man
shall his blood be shed," is the very same Being, the very same God, who
was born of the Virgin Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate--the very
same Christ who took little children up in His arms and blessed them, the
very same Word of God, too, of whom it is written, that out of His mouth
goeth a two-edged sword, that He may smite the nations, and He shall rule
them with a rod of iron, and He treadeth the wine press of the fierceness
and wrath of Almighty God? These are awful words, but, my dear friends,
I can only ask you if you think them too awful to be true? Do you
believe the Christian religion? Do you believe the Creeds? Do you
believe the Bible? For if you do, then you believe that the Lord Christ,
who was born of the Virgin Mary, and crucified under Pontius Pilate, is
the Maker, the Master, the Ruler of this world, and of all worlds. By
what laws He rules other worlds we know not, save that they are, because
they must be--just and merciful laws. But of the laws by which He rules
this world we do know, by experience, that His laws are of most terrible
and unbending severity, as I have warned you again and again, and shall
warn you, as long as there is a liar or an idler, a drunkard or an
adulteress in this parish.
And if this be so--if Christ be a God of severity as well as a God of
love, a God who punishes sinners as well as a God who forgives penitents-
-what then? We are, He tells us, made in His likeness. Then, according
to His likeness we must behave. We must copy His love, by helping the
poor and afflicted, the weak and the oppressed. But we must copy His
severity, by punishing whenever we have the power, without cowardice or
indulgence, all wilful offenders; and, above all, the man who destroys
God's image in himself, by murdering and destroying the mortal life of a
man made in the image of God. And more; if we be made in the likeness of
God and of Christ, we must remember, morning and night, and all day long,
that most awful and most blessed fact. We must say to ourselves, again
and again, "I am not a mere animal, and like a mere animal I must not
behave; I dare not behave like a mere animal, for I was made in the
likeness of God; and when I was baptised the Spirit of God took
possession of me to restore me to God's likeness, and to call out and
perfect God's likeness in me all my life long. Therefore, I am no mere
animal; and never was intended to be. I am the temple of God; my body
and soul belong to God, and not to my own fancies and passions and lusts,
and whosoever defiles the temple of God, him will God destroy."
Therefore, this is our duty, this is our only hope or safety--to do our
best to keep alive and strong the likeness of God in ourselves; to try to
grow, not more and more mean, and brutal, and carnal, but more and more
noble, and human, and spiritual; to crush down our base passions, our
selfish inclinations, by the help of the Spirit of God, and to think of
and to pray for, whatsoever is like Christ and like God; to pray for a
noble love of what is good and noble, for a noble hate of what is bad;
and whatsoever things are pure and lovely and of good report to think of
these things. And to pray, too, for forgiveness from Christ, and for the
sake of Christ, whenever we have yielded to our low passions, and defiled
the likeness of God in us, and grieved His Spirit, lest at the last day
it be said to us, if not in words yet in acts, which there will be no
mistaking, no escaping,--"I made thee in My likeness in the beginning of
the creation, I redeemed thee into My likeness on the cross, I baptised
thee into My likeness by my Holy Spirit; and what hast thou hast done
with My likeness? Thou hast cast it away, thou hast let it die out in
thee, thou hast lived after the flesh and not after the spirit, and hast
put on the likeness of the carnal man, the likeness of the brute. Thou
hast copied the vanity of the peacock, the silliness of the ape, the
cunning of the fox, the rapacity of the tiger, the sensuality of the
swine; but thou hast not copied God, thy God, who died that thou mightest
live, and be a man. Then, thou hast destroyed God's likeness, for thou
hast destroyed it in thyself. Thou hast slain a man, for thou hast slain
thy own manhood, and art thine own murderer, and thine own blood shall be
required at thy hand. That which thou hast done to God's likeness in
thee, shall be done to that which remains of thee in a second death."
And from that may Christ in His mercy deliver us all. Amen.