to me. But when I take my neighbor himself, and
first make him
property, and then
my
property, the latter act, which was the sole crime
in the former case, dwindles to nothing. The
sin in stealing a man, is not the transfer from its
owner to another of that which is
already property,
but the turning of
personality into
property.
True, the attributes of man remain, but the rights
and immunities which grow out of them are attributed.
It is the first law both of reason and revelation
to regard things and beings as they are; and the sum
of religion, to feel and act towards them according
to their value. Knowingly to treat them otherwise
is sin; and the degree of violence done to their nature,
religions, and value, measures its guilt. When
things are sundered which God has indissolubly joined,
or confounded in one, which he has separated by infinite
extremes; when sacred and eternal distinctions, which
he has garnished with glory, are derided and set at
nought, then, if ever, sin reddens to its “scarlet
dye.” The sin specified in the passage,
is that of doing violence to the
nature of
a man—to his intrinsic value as a rational
being, and blotting out the exalted distinction stamped
upon him by his Maker. In the verse preceding,
and in that which follows, the same principle is laid
down. Verse 15, “He that smiteth his father
or his mother shall surely be put to death.”
V. 17, “He that curseth his father or his mother,
shall surely be put to death.” If a Jew
smote his neighbor, the law merely smote him in return;
but if the blow was given to a
parent, it struck
the smiter dead. The parental relation is the
centre of human society. God guards it
with peculiar care. To violate that, is to violate
all. Whoever trampled on that, showed that
no
relation had any sacredness in his eyes—that
he was unfit to move among human relations who had
violated one so sacred and tender. Therefore,
the Mosaic law uplifted his bleeding corpse, and brandished
the ghastly terror around the parental relation to
guard it from impious inroads.
Why such a difference in penalties, for the same act?
Answer. (1.) The relation violated was obvious—the
distinction between parents and others manifest, dictated
by natural affection—a law of the constitution.
(2.) The act was violence to nature—a suicide
on constitutional susceptibilities. (3.) The parental
relation then, as now, was the focal point of the
social system, and required powerful safeguards. “Honor
thy father and thy mother,” stands at the
head of those commands which prescribe the duties
of man to man; and, throughout the Bible, the parental
state is God’s favorite illustration of his own
relations to the whole human family. In this case
death was to be inflicted not for smiting a man,
but a parent—a distinction
cherished by God, and around which, He threw up a bulwark
of defence. In the next verse, “He that