rt of
property--especially if by his own act, God had annihilated the
difference between man and _property_, by putting him on a level with
it?

The guilt of a crime, depends much upon the nature, character, and
condition of the victim. To steal is a crime, whoever the thief, or
whatever the plunder. To steal bread from a full man, is theft; to steal
it from a starving man, is both theft and murder. If I steal my
neighbor's property, the crime consists not in altering the _nature_ of
the article, but in taking as _mine_ what is _his_. But when I take my
neighbor himself, and first make him _property_, and then _my_ property,
the latter act, which was the sole crime in the former case, dwindles to
nothing. The sin in stealing a man, is not the transfer from its owner
to another of that which is already property, but the turning of
_personality_ into _property_. True, the attributes of man remain, but
the rights and immunities which grow out of them are annihilated. It is
the first law both of reason and revelation, to regard things and beings
as they are; and the sum of religion, to feel and act toward them
according to their value. Knowingly to treat them otherwise is sin; and
the degree of violence done to their nature, relations, and value,
measures its guilt. When things are sundered which God has indissolubly
joined, or confounded in one, which he has separated by infinite
extremes; when sacred and eternal distinctions, which he has garnished
with glory, are derided and set at nought, then, if ever, sin reddens to
its "scarlet dye." The sin specified in the passage, is that of doing
violence to the _nature_ of a _man_--to his intrinsic value as a
rational being. In the verse preceding the one under consideration, and
in that which follows, the same principle is laid down. Verse 15, "He
that smiteth his father or his mother shall surely be put to death."
Verse. 17, "He that curseth his father or his mother, shall surely be
put to death." If a Jew smote his neighbor, the law merely smote him in
return; but if the blow was given to a _parent_, it struck the smiter
dead. The parental relation is the _centre_ of human society. God guards
it with peculiar care. To violate that, is to violate all. Whoever
tramples on that, shows that _no_ relation has any sacredness in his
eyes--that he is unfit to move among human relations who violates one so
sacred and tender. Therefore, the Mosaic law uplifted his bleeding
corpse, and