who, by murder, outrages the likeness of God in himself and in his
victim.

You all know that there is now-a-days a strong feeling among some persons
about capital punishment; that there are those who will move heaven and
earth to interfere with the course of justice, and beg off the worst of
murderers, on any grounds, however unreasonable, fanciful, even unfair;
simply because they have a dislike to human beings being hanged. I
believe, from long consideration, that these persons' strange dislike
proceeds from their not believing sufficiently that man is made in the
image of God. And, alas! it proceeds, I fear, in some of them, from not
believing in a God at all--believing, perhaps, in some mere maker of the
world, but not in the living God which Scripture sets forth. For how
else can they say, as I have known some say, that capital punishment is
wrong, because "we have no right to usher a man into the presence of his
Maker."

Into the presence of his Maker! Why, where else is every man, you and I,
heathen and Christian, bad and good, save in the presence of his Maker
already? Do we not live and move and have our being in God? Whither can
we go from His spirit, or whither can we flee from His presence? If we
ascend into heaven, He is there. If we go down to hell He is there also.
And if the law puts a man to death, it does not usher him into the
presence of his Maker, for he is there already. It simply says to him,
"God has judged you on earth, not we. God will judge you in the next
world, not we. All we know is, that you are not fit to live in this
world. All our duty is to send you out of it. Where you will go in the
other world is God's matter, not ours, and the Lord have mercy on your
soul."