an opposition to the wise dispensations of providence, a resistance to God's holy will? If it be his determination that we should suffer, is it becoming in us to attempt to thwart that determination by a self-inflicted death? Are we not here in a state of probation for eternity, and can we therefore have any possible-nay, can we have even a plausible, right to abridge that period of trial to which we have been appointed, when, as we cannot be the arbiters of our own destinies, we can be no sufficient judges how long the term of our probation should continue?

Let us reflect moreover that suicide is a crime condemned by human laws and punished so far as it can be; since the body of the self-murderer is denied Christian burial as if it were abandoned by God and shut out from the beatitudes of eternity. It may indeed seem somewhat anomalous that punishment should be visited upon the senseless body of the self-destroyer, and the attempt at self-destruction, which bears precisely the same moral guilt as the attempt to murder another, should be accounted worthy of no penalty. It is not however that the crime is less, but only that the mercy is greater towards it; because it is so difficult to ascertain whether the act be done under the influence of temporary derangement or not.

Besides, it could not be consistently visited with similar punishment to that awarded to the

wilful destruction of a fellow creature, since this would be at once to fulfil the intention of the party punished by dooming him to that very end which he sought. This would really be no punishment, but in fact the reverse. It will not therefore follow that because the attempt at selfmurder is not punished equally with the attempt to kill another, human laws do not attach to it any guilt. The contrary is proved by the treatment of the body of the suicide after death.

Besides, let us only reflect a moment upon the awful consequences of self-destruction. Without contrition what hopes can we entertain of the divine mercy? Consider then the wretched victim of his own boisterous passions hurled without repentance into the presence of an offended God, in the very commission of a deadly sin of which he never can repent, and therefore for which, it is too much to be feared, he never may receive pardon. God gave us life, and He alone can have the right to take it away when, in his unerring wisdom, He shall deem it fitting, either by accident or disease, or by the judicial awards of his constituted authorities in cases of violation of those ordinances which are framed for the protection of all civil communities.

We shall now proceed to consider in what consists the virtual, though not the literal

breach of the sixth commandment. First, then, hatred of another comes within the scope of this offence. "Hatred stirreth up strifes," says the wise man, and we too sadly experience how often strifes terminate in death. Hatred too is among the number of deadly sins enumerated by St. Paul as excluding us from the kingdom of Heaven; and St. John, as I have before shown, ranks it with the crime of murder. Besides, to what does hatred instigate the heart where it is constantly cherished? It subdues the finer sympathies of our nature. It destroys the growth of all the lovelier qualities of our being. It allows, by imperceptible degrees, the weeds of sin to clog and finally to destroy the roots of virtue, when the worst vices shoot up within us to rapid and terrible maturity. Hatred impels us to rejoice at the death of him we hate, and where our hearts would prompt us to rejoice at the death of any one whom we hated, it is probable that nothing but the fear of punishment, in most cases at least, if not in all, would deter us from engaging in his destruction. However this may be, to wish an innocent man dead is, in the sight of infinite wisdom, a violation of the command of the text, "He that hateth dissembleth with his lips, and layeth up deceit within him :" so that he is always to be feared, never to be trusted.

Besides, he cannot be obedient to the most

important commandment enjoined to him and all mankind. He cannot love God; "for if he love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?" And what is the christian precept? "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you, that ye may be the children of your Father which is in Heaven." Our blessed Lord every where exemplified this doctrine during his illustrious life, and particularly at his death. To encourage hatred is to encourage guilt, because hatred tends to guilt, and no man shall say to what lengths it will impel him if no check be applied to allay its fermentations. From this degrading passion the most deadly consequences may, and but too frequently do, ensue. Hatred leads to injury, and often ends in death; he therefore that "hateth his brother is a murderer."

Again, all causeless anger, every yielding to the violent excitements of our perverted nature, is likewise a virtual violation of the commandment under review; because, by fomenting our angry passions, we multiply our risks of committing that very act which the prohibition of the text commands us to avoid. "Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous, but who is able to stand before envy?" It is these which harden the heart, and so frequently plunge us into the moral,

though not the actual, guilt of murder, in which there is no distinction with Him who knows" the thoughts and intents of the heart." By giving way to our passions we lose our self-command, and when they are left without this check, they often hurry us onward into irretrievable misery and ruin. To what, for instance, does envy naturally instigate our minds? To detraction, to falsehood, to hatred, and not uncommonly to wish for the death of the object of our envy. To what does malice prompt our feelings? To the same or similar sins! To what does revenge excite us? To inflict pain, to do injury in every shape, to suppress our noblest sympathies, to hate, to destroy! And with God we are to remember that motives are frequently more criminal than actions.

All our fiercer passions have a tendency to lead us into acts of violence, and therefore, in proportion as that tendency is increased by encouragement, we are more or less guilty of a breach of God's law delivered to us in the sixth commandment of the Decalogue. St. Paul classes under one denomination of crime "hatred, variance, strifes, seditions, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings and such like," because they all tend to a certain degree to the same issue. No man could become a wilful murderer who did not give way to the sterner passions of his soul. Where these are subdued we never can