Page:Toleration and other essays.djvu/98

74 for their brethren; but the consequences of the principle were peculiar. They knew that all infants which die unbaptised are damned, and that  those which are so fortunate as to die immediately  after baptism enjoy eternal glory. They therefore proceeded to kill all the newly-baptised boys and girls  that they could find. No doubt this was a way of securing for them the highest conceivable happiness and preserving them from the sin and misery  of this life. But these charitable folk forgot that it is not lawful to do a little evil that a great good  may follow; that they had no right to the lives of  these children; that the majority of parents are  carnal enough to prefer to keep their children rather  than see them slain in order to enter paradise; and  that the magistrate has to punish homicide, even  when it is done with a good intention.

The Jews would seem to have a better right than any to rob and kill us. Though there are a hundred instances of toleration in the Old Testament, there are also some instances and laws of severity. God has at times commanded them to kill idolaters, and reserve only the marriageable girls. Now they regard us as idolaters, and, although we tolerate  them to-day, it is possible that, if they became  masters, they would suffer only our girls to live.

They would, at least, be absolutely compelled to slay all the Turks, because the Turks occupy the lands of the Hittites, Jebusites, Amorrhæans, Jersensæans, Hevæans, Aracæans, Cinæans, Hamatæans, and Samaritans. All these peoples were anathematised, and their country, which was more  than seventy-five miles long, was given to the Jews