is mine, and mine it will
ever remain, wherever in this world another may have betaken himself
with it. As long as it exists it will appeal to me as to its master and
owner; if justice is not done in this world, then it will appeal to the
justice of Heaven for vengeance.

The six last commandments treat of the rights of man and condemn
injustice. We are told to respect the life, the virtue, the goods and
the reputation of our fellow-men; we are commanded to do so not only in
act, but also in thought and desire. Life is protected by the fifth,
virtue by the sixth and ninth, property by the seventh and tenth, and
reputation by the eighth. To sin against any of these commandments is
to sin against justice in one form or another.

The claims, however, of violated justice are not such as to exact the
impossible in order to repair an injury done. A dead man cannot be
brought back to life, a penniless thief cannot make restitution unless
he steals from somebody else, etc., etc. But he who finds himself thus
physically incapable of undoing the wrongs committed must have at least
the will and intention of so doing: to revoke such intention would be
to commit a fresh sin of injustice. The alternative is to do penance,
either willingly in this life, or forcibly in the purging flames of the
suffering Church in the next. In that way, some time or other, justice,
according to the plan of God, will be done; but He will never be
satisfied until it is done.

CHAPTER LXVIII.
HOMICIDE.

TO kill is to take life, human or animal. It was once thought by a sect
of crazy fanatics, that the Fifth Commandment applied to the killing of
animals as well as of men. When a man slays a man, he slays an equal;
when he kills an animal, he kills a creature made to serve him and to
be his food; and raw meat is not always palatable, and to cook is to
kill. "Everything that moves and lives," says Holy Writ, "shall be unto
you as food."

The killing therefore herein question is the taking of human life, or
homicide. There can be no doubt but that life is man's best and most
precious possession, and that he has an inborn right to live as long as
nature's laws operate in his favor. But man is not master of that gift
of life, either in himself or in others. God, who alone can give, alone
may take it away. Sole master of life, He deals it out to His creatures
as it pleases Him; and whoever tampers with human life intrudes upon
the domain of the Divin