"
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.
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