1 Samuel 31:4 Then said Saul to his armor bearer, Draw your sword, and thrust me through therewith… Our Creator, it is said, has given us a general desire to obtain good, and avoid evil; why may we not obey this impulse? We leave a kingdom, or a society, of which we do not approve; we avoid bodily pain by all the means which we can invent; why may we not cease to live, when life becomes a greater evil, than a good? Because, in avoiding pain, or in procuring pleasure, we are always to consider the good of others, as well as our own. Poverty is an evil, but we may not rob to avoid it; power is a good, but it is not justifiable to obtain it by violence or deceit; we have only a right to consult our own good within certain boundaries, and after such a manner that we do not diminish the good of others: Every evil incapable of such limited remedy, it is our duty to bear; and if the general idea that we have a right to procure voluntary death to ourselves, be pregnant with infinite mischief to the interests of religion, and morality, it is our duty to live, as much as it is our duty to do anything else for the same reason; a single instance of suicide may be of little consequence; nor is a single instance of robbery of much; but we judge of single actions, by the probability there is of their becoming frequent, and by the effects they produce, when they are frequent. 1. Suicide, is as unfavourable to human talents, and resources, as it is to human virtues; we should never have dreamt of the latent power, and energy of our nature, but for the struggle of great minds with great afflictions, nor known the limits of ourselves, nor man's dominion over fortune: What would the world now have been, if it had always been said, because the archers smite me sore, and the battle goeth against me, I will die? Alas! man has gained all his joy by his pains; misery, hunger, and nakedness, have been his teachers, and goaded him on to the glories of civilised life; take from him his unyielding spirit, and if he had lived at all, he would have lived the most suffering creature of the forest. 2. Suicide has been called magnanimity; but what is magnanimity? A patient endurance of evil, to effect a proposed good; and when considering the strange mutability of human affairs, are we to consider this endurance as useless, or when should hope terminate but with life? To linger out year after year, unbroken in spirit, unchanged in purpose, is doubtless, a less imposing destiny than public, and pompous suicide; but if to be, is more commendable, than to seem to be; if we love the virtue, better than the name, then is it true magnanimity to extract wisdom from misery, and doctrine from shame; to call day, and night upon God; to keep the mind's eye sternly riveted on its object through failure, and through suffering; through evil report, and through good report; and to make the bed of death the only grave of human hope; but at the moment when Christianity warns you that your present adversity may be a trial from God; when experience teaches that great qualities come in arduous situations; when piety stimulates you to show the hidden vigour, the inexhaustible resources, the beautiful capacities of that soul, which God has exempted from the destruction which surrounds it; at that moment, the law of self-murder gives you, for your resource, ignominious death, frightful disobedience, and never-ending torments. 3. It may be imagined that suicide is a crime of rare occurrence, but we must not so much overrate our love of life, when there is hardly a passion so weak, which cannot at times, overcome it; many fling away life from ambition, many from vanity, many from restlessness, many from fear, many from almost every motive; nature has made death terrible, but nature has made those evils terrible, from the dread of which we seek death; nature has made resentment terrible, infamy terrible, want terrible, hunger terrible; every first principle of our nature alternately conquers and is conquered; the passion that is a despot in one mind, is a slave in the other; we know nothing of their relative force. 4. It is hardly possible be conceive this crime, committed by anyone who has not confounded his common notions of right and wrong by some previous sophistry, and cheated himself into a temporary scepticism; but who would trust to the reasoning of such a moment in such a state of the passions, when the probability of error is so great, and the punishment so immeasurable? Men should determine, even upon important human actions, with coolness, and unimpeded thought; much less, then, is a rash and disturbed hour enough for eternity. 5. It has often been asked, if self-murder is forbidden by the Christian religion; but those who ask this question forget, that Christianity is not a code of laws, but a set of principles from which particular laws must frequently be inferred; it is not sufficient to say, there is no precise, and positive law, naming, and forbidding self-murder; there is no law of the gospel, which forbids the subject to destroy his ruler; but there is a law, which says, fear, and obey him; there is no law which prevents me from slaying my parent; but there is a law which says, love, and honour them; "be meek, says our Saviour;" "be long suffering; abide patiently to the last; submit to the chastening hand of God," and let us never forget, that the fifth, and greatest gospel is the life of Christ; that he acted for us, as well as taught, that in the deserts of Judea, in the hall of Pilate, on the supreme cross, his patience shows us, that evil is to be endured, and his prayers point out to us, how alone it can be mitigated. (Sidney Smith, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Then said Saul unto his armourbearer, Draw thy sword, and thrust me through therewith; lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through, and abuse me. But his armourbearer would not; for he was sore afraid. Therefore Saul took a sword, and fell upon it. |
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