“I agree with you,” returned Mrs. Heath; “it is not worth while for man to try to be wiser or more merciful than his Maker.”
“Where is the command to which you have referred?” asked Ronald. “Do not those who are opposed to capital punishment assert that it was a part of the Levitical law, and that therefore the obligation to obey it has passed away?”
“Some do,” said Charlton, “but it must be from ignorance of the time when the command was given, and to whom. It is found in the ninth chapter of Genesis, fifth and sixth verses.
“The fact that it was given to Noah just after the flood shows that it is binding upon all mankind; for Noah was the progenitor of all races of men now living upon the face of the earth. Some opposers of capital punishment say, to be sure, that the words are to be understood in the sense of a prediction, not a command; but to my mind it is very clear that they are the latter. Let me read you the passage,” he continued, taking up a Bible that lay on a table near which he was seated, and turning over its pages.
“Do; we shall be glad to hear it,” answered Mrs. Heath; and he complied.
“‘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.’”
Closing the book, “Is it not a plain command?” he asked; “and being, as I have already remarked, given to him by whose descendants the whole earth was to be peopled—given hundreds of years before Abraham, the progenitor of the Jews, was born—it is evidently not merely a part of the Levitical law, but is to this day as binding as ever upon all mankind, Jew and Gentile alike.
“It is a dangerous thing,” he went on, “for men to disregard any law of God; probably yesterday’s lynching would not have occurred had not the outraged community felt that there was no hope of justice upon the criminal through the operation of the law of the State; and I fear we may be going to have more of the same kind of work; the popular feeling against O’Rourke is very strong all up and down the valley.”
“Do you think there will be an attempt to lynch him?” asked Ronald, while the faces of the two ladies turned pale with apprehension.
“I hope not, but I certainly fear it,” replied the captain; “there are angry mutterings in the air that seem to presage a coming storm.”