Entry 52
Thou shalt not kill. Were this all that the sixth commandment contains, it might surely be passed by without comment. It is not to be thought that any one who reads this page will ever imbrue his hands in his brother’s blood. Were the whole moral law concerning human life fully expressed, fully applied, and fully illustrated in the letter of this commandment, then it need not detain us long. But when we find a Psalmist saying, “Thy commandment is exceeding broad,” and when we hear the apostle crying out because of the pain in his own heart, “We know that the law is spiritual,” and especially, when we read our Lord’s gloss and comment on this commandment, we come to see that it has more to say to us than at first sight we had thought. No expositor dare pass by the sixth commandment in silence after reading this utterance of his Divine Master: “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: but I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca! shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool! shall be in danger of hell fire.” That authoritative interpretation lifts the sixth commandment into a new world; the student sees now something of what the Psalmist meant when he said, “Thy commandment is exceeding broad.” And if any more were needed to open up the manifold fulness of this commandment, it would be found in the commentary supplied by the Catechism itself, in which we are taught that this commandment “requireth all lawful endeavours to preserve our own life, and the life of others,” and “forbiddeth the taking away of our own life, or the life of our neighbour unjustly, or whatsoever tendeth thereunto.”
requireth all lawful endeavours to preserve our own life—This implies that there may be such a thing as an unlawfal and impolitic endeavour to preserve our own life, according to our Lord’s apposite saying: “Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it. He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.” The paradoxical saying of De Witt has an important bearing on this matter also: “Be careful of your health, but be careless of your life.”
forbiddeth the taking away of our own life, or the life of our neighbour unjustly—This conditioning word unjustly, suggests, and indeed teaches, that there is a taking away of life that is done justly. War and capital punishment come under the shelter of this limiting and constraining clause. They are permitted and indeed enjoined by this commandment when it is correctly interpreted. Judicially to take away the life of a murderer is not only lawful, but obligatory. This commandment does not say to the judge, “Thou shalt not kill;” it does not bid him put back the sword of justice into its sheath, for then he would bear the sword in vain, and would become a protection to evil-doers, and a terror to them that do well.
War also, a just and necessary war, is not only not forbidden, but is rather sanctioned and enjoined by this commandment. Religion does not annul the right and duty of self-defence. Civilized nations must protect the life and property and liberty of their citizens. This indeed is one main end of national life. At the same time, all rulers and judges, all statesmen who guide public and international affairs, and all citizens whose suffrages install statesmen, should remember the noble words of Edmund Burke: “The blood of man should never be shed, but to redeem the blood of man. It is well shed for our family, for our friends, for our God, for our country; the rest is vanity; the rest is crime.”
Uses
As interpreted and reissued by our Lord, this commandment is directed against all causeless, unjust, ungoverned, and cherished anger. There is an anger that is natural, proper, and even praiseworthy; and again there is an anger so different from all that, that it is in danger of the judgment. Anger is an emotion of the human heart that slumbers in silence till it is kindled and flames up in the presence of any wrong. Anger, in this sense, is a gift of God. It is a quick instrument designed to protect life and life’s interests against whatever would destroy or injure them. No passion that God has implanted in the human heart can be in itself evil. In excess, unrestrained, unchastened, put to evil ends, our best affections and emotions are injurious and sinful; but there is a legitimate and divinely appointed scope and sphere for all the passions that God hath implanted in the heart of man. And eminently so of anger. Sudden anger is simply a natural instinct. It springs up before reflection, and is independent of it. Anger is up in arms in a moment before a man has time to ask whether or no he does well to be angry. The hand is instinctively and immediately lifted to protect the body from a sudden blow, and anger is as quick in its movements, and is directed to the same end. But as we best study the doctrine of anger in the teaching of our Lord, so do we find in His conduct its safest and best illustration. He was made man; that is to say, He had in His heart all our passions and affections, and again in His words and deeds we see this passion of anger burning up against wrong, and burning up for our example. “Be angry,” says the apostle, “and sin not. Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.”
But it is a very different thing when instinctive anger and righteous indignation become settled hatred and invincible malice. Now that this sin is both natural and universal among men, the apostle teaches us in the confession he makes about himself. “We ourselves,” he says, “sometimes lived in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.” And this fearful indictment is not any too dark, as every man must confess with shame and guilt who reads aright what goes on in his own heart. Hatred is an inveterate and bitter dislike at any one, a dislike that is always accompanied with a more or less explicit, a more or less acknowledged and fostered desire to hurt the hated person. “Hates any man,” cries Shylock, “the thing he would not kill!” Murder, in the teaching of our Divine Master, and in the teaching of the greatest master of the human heart that has ever risen among the sons of men, is not alone, is not at all in the act, it is in the wish and intention. And when we have the wish, though the murderous act is securely hindered, yet in God’s sight we are red all over with our brother’s blood. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.”
Our Lord counts scorn also under the same murderous category with anger and hatred. But here also a distinction must be taken. Scorn, like anger, may sometimes be most fitting, most just, and most praiseworthy. There is in all noble hearts a divinely implanted and noble scorn wherewith to blight and burn up all meanness and selfishness, all despicable and contemptible persons with all their mean and despicable deeds. The Scriptures, and especially the prophetical scriptures, abound in this divine and magnanimous scorn. But, on the other hand, there is the satanic scorn of a proud, hard, cruel heart. A scorn very far indeed from that exhibited by Isaiah and Jesus Christ. This scorn is full of contumelious and bitter words. It despises and humiliates men out of sheer ungodliness and pride of heart. And if it is too proud to show itself scornful, it is not less, but more hateful in the sight of God. It is far easier and far more natural for all of us to look down, and find fault, and despise, and scorn, than it is to look up, and find excellence, and then to honour, and reverence, and praise.
“No knight of Arthur’s noblest dealt in scorn.”
“We ourselves were sometimes living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another” (Paul). Homo homini lupus (Old saying). “Lady Macleod asked if no man was naturally good? Johnson. No, Madam, no more than a wolf. Boswell. Nor no woman, Sir? Johnson. No, Sir!” (Johnson at Dunvegan).
Questions
Study the Larger Catechism, Questions 134–136.
Read Butler’s sermons Upon Resentment, and Upon Forgiveness of Injuries; and note his teaching on the differences between malice and all other passions of the human heart.
Give some examples of unlawful endeavours to preserve our own life.
Show the bearing and application of the saying: Be careful of health, but be careless of life.
Commit the lines:—
“To whom our ancestor,
‘Henceforth I fly not Death, nor would prolong
Life much, bent rather how I may be quit
Fairest and easiest of this cumbrous charge;
Which I must keep till my appointed day
Of rend’ring up, and patiently attend
My dissolution.’ Michael repli’d,
‘Nor love thy life, nor hate; but what thou liv’st
Live well; how long or short permit to Heav’n.’”