We find God in the Old Law, while upholding His fifth precept, commanding capital punishment and sanctioning the slaughter of war; He not only approved the slaying of certain persons, but there are instances of His giving authority to kill. By so doing He delegated His supreme right over life to His creatures. "Whoever sheds human blood, let his blood be shed." In the New Testament the officer of the law is called the minister of God and is said not without cause to carry the sword; and the sword is the symbol of the power to inflict death.
The presence of such laws as that of capital punishment, of war and of self-defense, in all the written codes of civilized peoples, as well as in the unwritten codes of savage tribes, can be accounted for only by a direct or indirect commission from the Deity. A legal tradition so universal and so constant is a natural law, and consequently a divine law. In a matter of such importance all mankind could not have erred; if it has, it is perfectly safe to be with it in its error.
These exceptions, if we may call them exceptions, suppose the victim to have forfeited his right to live, to have placed himself in a position of unjust aggression, which aggression gives to the party attacked the right to repel it, to protect his own life even at the cost of the life of the unjust aggressor. This is an individual privilege in only one instance, that of self-defence; in all others it is invested in the body politic or society which alone can declare war and inflict death on a capital offender.
Of course it may be said that in moral matters, like does not cure like, that to permit killing is a strange manner of discouraging the same. But this measure acts as a deterrent; it is not a cure for the offender, or rather it is, and a radical one; it is intended to instil a salutary dread into the hearts of those who may be inclined to play too freely with human life. This is the only argument assassins understand; it is therefore the only one we can use against them.
[CHAPTER LXIX.]
IS SUICIDE A SIN?
MOST people no doubt remember how, a short time previous to his death, Col. Robert Ingersoli, the agnostic lecturer, gave out a thesis with the above title, offering a negative conclusion. Some discussion ensued in public print; the question was debated hotly, and whole columns of pros and cons were inflicted on the suffering public by the theologues who had taken the matter seriously.
We recall, too, how, in the height of the discussion, a poor devil of an unfortunate was found in one of the parks of the Metropolis with an empty pistol in his clinched fist, a bullet in his head and in his pocket a copy of the thesis: Is suicide a sin?
To a Christian, this theorizing and speculation was laughable enough; but when one was brought face to face with the reality of the thing, a grim humor was added to the situation. Comedy is dangerous that leads to tragedy.
The witty part of the matter was this: Ingersoli spoke of sin. Now, what kind of an intelligible thing could sin be in the mind of a blasphemous agnostic? What meaning could it have for any man who professes not to know, or to care, who or what God is?
If there is no Legislator, there is no Law; if no Law, then no violation of the Law. If God does not exist, there can be no offending Him. Eliminate the notion of God, and there is no such thing as sin. Sin, therefore, had no meaning for Ingersoli; his thesis had no meaning, nothing he said had any meaning. Yet, people took him seriously! And at least one poor wretch was willing to test the truth of the assertion and run his chances.