MURDER.
Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder.—Matthew, xix. 18.
Whosoever hateth his brother, is a murderer; and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.—I. John, iii. 15.
The great King of kings
Hath in the table of His law commanded
That thou shalt do no murder; wilt thou then
Spurn at His edict, and fulfil a man’s?
Shakspere.
Other sins only speak; murder shrieks out.
The element of water moistens the earth,
But blood mounts upwards.
John Webster.
Silently, swift as the lightning’s blast,
A hand of fire across his temples passed;
He ran, as in the terror of a dream,
To quench his burning anguish in the stream;
But, bending o’er the brink, the swelling wave
Back to his eye the branded visage gave;
As soon on murdered Abel durst he look:
Yet power to fly his palsied limbs forsook;
There turned to stone, for his presumptuous crime,
A monument of wrath to latest time,
Might Cain have stood; but mercy raised his head
In prayer for help,—his strength returned, he fled.
James Montgomery.
The murderer has no past
But one eternal present.
T. N. Talfourd.
He told how murderers walked the earth
Beneath the curse of Cain;
With crimson clouds before their eyes,
And flames about their brain:
For blood has left upon their souls
Its everlasting stain!
Thomas Hood.
Lo, on the everlasting stone engraved,
“No murder shalt thou do.” From God to man
The solemn law came down: by specious gloss
Of subtle learning, seek not to evade
The great command.
Samuel Hayes.