who eat men--and alas! there are thousands even now who do so--usually
know in their hearts that they are doing wrong. As soon as their
consciences are the least awakened, they are ashamed of their
cannibalism; they lie about it, try to conceal it; and as soon as God's
grace begins to work on them, it is the very first sin that they give up.
And next, this is certain, that there is a curse upon it. No cannibal
people, so far as I can find, have ever risen or prospered in the world;
and the cannibal peoples now-a-days, and for the last three hundred
years, have been dying out. By their own vices, diseases, and wars, they
perish off the face of the earth, in the midst of comfort and plenty;
and, in spite of all the efforts of missionaries, even their children and
grand-children, after giving up the horrid crime, and becoming
Christians, seem to have no power of living and increasing, but dwindle
away, and perish off the earth. Yes, God's laws work in strange and
subtle ways; so darkly, so slowly, that the ungodly and sinners often
believe that there are no laws of God, and say--"Tush, how should God
perceive it? Is there knowledge in the Most High?" But the laws work,
nevertheless, whether men are aware of them or not. "The mills of God
grind slowly," but sooner or later they grind the sinner to powder.

And now I will leave this hateful subject and go on to another, on which
I am moved to speak once and for all, because it is much in men's minds
just now--I mean what is vulgarly called "capital punishment," the
punishing of murder by death. Now the text, which is the ancient
covenant of God with man, speaks very clearly on this point. "Whosoever
sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." Man is made in
the likeness of God. That is the ground of our law about murder, as it
is the ground of all just and merciful law; that gives man his right to
slay the murderer; that makes it his duty to slay the murderer. He has
to be jealous of God's likeness, and to slay, in the name of God, the man