PAGE 15
Who Was He?
by
“You say right! You say right, old man!” exclaimed the girl. “His life is not a common life. It represents such power and faculty and opportunity, and I may say such devotion to the many, that it does not belong to him, and may not therefore be disposed of as if he owned it himself and had the right to do with it as he pleased.”
“I do not say,” answered the man, “that I own my life. I say rather that I do not own it. I owe it. There are debts you cannot pay by life. The laws of the whole world recognize this; nor do we do by living the greatest service. He who dies to uphold a righteous principle fulfils all righteousness. He who gives away a life in atonement for a life taken makes all life more sacred; and so he serves the living beyond all other service he might do. She looks at individuals; I observe principles. She contemplates only the present; I forecast the future needs of man. Moreover, the highest service one can do man is to serve himself in the highest manner. He who ministers to his own sense of justice strengthens the judicial sense of the world. Men overvalue life when they suppose that there is nothing better. To teach them that there is something better, to impress them by some signal event that there is something higher and nobler than mere living, is to fulfill all benevolence to their souls. How many the Saviour could feed and heal and bless by avoiding Calvary! And yet he did not avoid it. He showed the object of life, which is service. I trust I have not wholly failed to show men that. He then showed the highest object of dying, which is service. Why should I not imitate him? Why should I not be a law unto myself and bear the penalty voluntarily?”
The man rose to his feet as he concluded, and looking at the trapper and Herbert, said:
“Gentlemen, I thank you for your hospitality and courtesy,” and turning to the girl he said, “Mary, we will talk this matter over more fully by ourselves.”
And then he bowed to the group and turned away.
IV
Long after the man and the girl had departed, the trapper and Herbert sat by their campfire discussing the question which their guest had propounded. Their conversation was grave and deliberate, as became the theme; and they united in the opinion that if the deed had been done in anger elicited by a provocation, the man should give himself the favor which the law even would allow under similar circumstances.
“I tell ye, Herbert,” said the trapper, “the girl said the man had cause; leastwise, that the man whom he struck worried him to it and that the blow was given in anger. Now, hot blood is hot blood, and cold blood is cold blood, and ef a man kill another man in cold blood it be murder,–the law says so, and what is better, natur’ says so; but ef a man kill another man in his anger, when his blood is up and he is strongly provoked to it, the law says there be a difference, and it isn’t murder. And I conceit that the girl be right, and that the man has no right, in natur’ or law either, to murder himself because in his anger he murdered another man. And besides,” continued the old man, after a moment’s pause, during which he had evidently made an effort at memory, “ef there be any wrath in the case it belongs to the Lord and not to man. Ye may recall the varse, Henry.”
“‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.'” Such was the quotation Herbert made.
“Sartinly, sartinly,” answered the trapper, “that is it. Vengeance is the Lord’s, and he is the only one that can handle it rightly; and the man had better leave it to the Lord.”