THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT. (THE LAW OF VENGEANCE.) Miss O. The lessons connected with this Commandment are so striking, that I wish I could draw them out better.

Miss O. The primary and visible object is, of course, the security of life, the first law of human society. At the same time there is a remarkable course of teaching of the sacredness of blood, and the need of expiation-nay, as if that expiation was especially connected with blood.

Helena. Do we begin with the words to Cain. The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto Me from the ground; and now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from the ground.'

Mary. Cain thought whoever found him would slay him.

Audrey. But a mark was set upon him that he might not be slain.

Miss O. His more terrible curse was the type of that which should lie on those who slew their great Elder Brother, the failing heart and wandering foot, the fugitive and the vagabond life.

PART 76.

Helena. I suppose there is the same sense of the penalty incurred, in those strange wild words of Lamech to his wives.

Miss O. And the whole was put in express words by the Lord's own mouth, in the law that He spoke to Noah and his sons, before the parting of the nations.

Mary. But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat. 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.'

Miss O. Not only is it materially true that life is chiefly attached to the blood, but the pouring out of blood has a special significance in atoning for sin: Without shedding of blood there is no remission,' and, therefore, all over the world, expiatory sacrifices have always been made by the shedding of blood.

Audrey. I suppose that it was to keep up this feeling of its sacredness that it was to be poured away as the life of the flesh,' in the case of animals killed for food.

Helena. This, I suppose, was the first permission to use them for it. But was not that saying intended to hinder such savage barbarity as the Abyssinians use?

Miss O. No doubt that was one object; but the other is thought to have been intended; and you know the Apostles evidently considered it as one of the laws given to all the world, independent of the Israelitish ceremonies, when they commanded the Gentiles to abstain from 'things strangled and from blood.'

Audrey. If an animal's blood was so sacred, what was not that of a man, made in the Image of God!

Miss O. Yes, Divine leading, in those early days, before law was given, seems to have interpreted the words, 'At the hand of every man's brother will I require it,'

into a charge to the nearest of kin to the murdered, to destroy the criminal.

Helena. The avenger of blood.

Miss O. It is believed that Rebekah alluded to this custom when Esau was plotting Jacob's death, and she id, 'Why should I be deprived of you both in one day as though Esau must have died for killing his brother.

Helena. Have not the Arabs still the patriarchal rule, making vengeance the duty of the relatives of the deceased?

Miss O. And many other nations too, though it became debased into mere savage barbarism and deadly feuds, instead of the solemn and awful duty which it was in the first institution.

Audrey. But do you mean that human personal vengeance was commanded by God?

Miss O. At least there are appearances of it, and that is the point I was trying to lead you to. As if the relative of the slain was absolutely, and by Divine command, charged with exacting vengeance, or else the unexpiated loss of innocent life lay as a curse upon the whole land. He was called by a name, which is said to mean the Stained, or the Contaminated, until his duty of avenging had been fulfilled.

Audrey. How fearful!

Mary. But there were the Cities of Refuge.

Miss 0. True; they were an institution of mercy, but of mercy that still showed how deadly was the guilt of bloodshed. Though they were to be multiplied according to need, and the roads to them were to be as direct and easy as possible, yet they were a prison to the man-slayer; though his misfortune were accidental, or the death inflicted in self-defence.

even

Helena. The avenger might slay him if he overtook

him on the way.

Mary. Or if ever he found him beyond the bounds of the city.

Helena. And even when he was within the shelter of the city, the elders were to try the case, and if they found it amounted to wilful murder, 'Thine shall no pity him; but thou shalt put away the guilt of innocent blood from Israel, that it may go well with thee.'

eye

Mary. And he could never come to live at home til either the High Priest died, or there was a year o Jubilee.

Audrey. And those were both types of the great expiation.

Miss O. Observe, too, the rites when a corpse was found slain, and the murderer remained undetected. The neare city was found by measuring the distance, a heifer, neve used before, was led down, by the elders of the place, to on of those bare craggy valleys, never eared nor sown, he head was cut off, and the elders washed their hands ove her, while the prayer was made, 'Our hands have n shed this blood, neither have our eyes seen it. Be merc ful, O Lord, unto Thy people, Israel, whom Thou has redeemed, and lay not innocent blood to their charge.'

Audrey. As if blood must be visited, unless they r ferred by figure to the Atonement, and in those words 'whom Thou hast redeemed,' as if they were to look forward, as well as going back to the redemption out c Egypt.

Helena. And every ceremony kept up the sense th living blood was a sacred cleansing thing. It consecrate the Covenant, and no one could be purified from any a cleanness without the blood of animals.

Miss O. The guilt of shedding blood, or of inflicting injury, was enforced in other ways-there was the destruc tion of any animal that had caused death, and there wa the stern law of retaliation, which exacted injury for injury an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. The whol

spirit was of awful and strict justice, leaving some crimes unexpiated and inexpiable. Mercy only left innocent blood to cry from the ground, where it was believed that rain never fell, green thing never grew!

Audrey. It was very awful!

Miss O. And the stern school-master, the law, speaks in example as well as in the code. See the retribution on Abimelech for the murder of his brothers, and on the men of Shechem who aided him! See the terrible slaughter of the Benjamites, in which the other tribes were guided by revelations from the Divine oracles!

Helena. And the consequence of Saul's unexpiated massacre of the Gibeonites, the famine coming on the land so long after, and making David discover the cause, and give up Saul's sons and grandsons to die.

Audrey. And even David might not build the Temple because he had been a man of blood.

Mary. David's whole family suffered for the blood of Uriah.

Miss O. Yes, it was deep and terrible agony that made him pray, 'Deliver me from blood-guiltiness.' And you see it was especially the penalty of death from which Nathan absolved him.

Audrey. But the child died instead; and the sword never departed from his house, and all the miseries of his fatter years were sent upon him.

Helena. I suppose the story that the widow of Tekoah told him, is an instance of the way in which the law of vengeance was carried out-the relations insisting on the death of the son who had killed his brother.

Miss O. You see the necessity of giving life for life where David charges Solomon to avenge the deaths of Abner and Amasa upon Joab, and not to let his hoar head go down to the grave in peace.

Helena. When Benaiah hesitates to slay Joab at the altar, Solomon says to him, 'Their blood shall therefore