e, and which swallows us by myriads:

With moldering bones the deep is white
From the frozen zones to the tropic bright.

Of the other one-fourth more than one-half is uninhabitable by reason of
climate. On the remaining one-eighth we pass a comfortless and
precarious existence in disputed occupancy with countless ministers of
death and pain--pass it in fighting for it, tooth and nail, a hopeless
battle in which we are foredoomed to defeat. Everywhere death, terror,
lamentation and the laughter that is more terrible than tears--the fury
and despair of a race hanging on to life by the tips of its fingers. And
the prize for which we strive, "to have and to hold"--what is it? A
thing that is neither enjoyed while had, or missed when lost. So
worthless it is, so unsatisfying, so inadequate to purpose, so false to
hope and at its best so brief, that for consolation and compensation we
set up fantastic faiths of an aftertime in a better world from which no
confirming whisper has ever reached us across the void. Heaven is a
prophecy uttered by the lips of despair, but Hell is an inference from
analogy.

THE DEATH PENALTY

I

"Down with the gallows!" is a cry not unfamiliar in America. There is
always a movement afoot to make odious the just principle; of "a life
for a life"--to represent it as "a relic of barbarism," "a usurpation of
the divine authority," and the rest of it. The law making murder
punishable by death is as purely a measure of self-defense as is the
display of a pistol to one diligently endeavoring to kill without
provocation. It is in precisely the same sense an admonition, a warning
to abstain from crime. Society says by that law: "If you kill one of us
you die," just as by display of the pistol the individual whose life is
attacked says: "Desist or be shot." To be effective the warning in
either case must be more than an idle threat. Even the most unearthly
reasoner among the anti-hanging unfortunates would hardly expect to
frighten away an assassin who knew the pistol to be unloaded. Of course
these queer illogicians can not be made to understand that their
position commits them to absolute non-resistance to any kind of
aggression; and that is fortunate for the rest of us, for if as
Christians they frankly and consistently took that ground we should be
under the miserable necessity of respecting them.

We have good reason to hold that the horrible prevalence of murder in
this country is