If bad, I do not
see how its exemption from certain future overt acts by being snatched
away at all tells in its favor. You stop the arm of a murderer, or
arrest the finger of a pickpurse; but is not the guilt incurred as much
by the intent as if never so much acted? Why children are hurried off,
and old reprobates of a hundred left, whose trial humanly we may think
was complete at fifty, is among the obscurities of providence, The very
notion of a state of probation has darkness in it. The All-knower has no
need of satisfying his eyes by seeing what we will do, when he knows
before what we will do. Methinks we might be condemned before
commission. In these things we grope and flounder; and if we can pick up
a little human comfort that the child taken is snatched from vice (no
great compliment to it, by the by), let us take it. And as to where an
untried child goes, whether to join the assembly of its elders who have
borne the heat of the day,--fire-purified martyrs and torment-sifted
confessors,--what know we? We promise heaven, methinks, too cheaply, and
assign large revenues to minors incompetent to manage them. Epitaphs run
upon this topic of consolation till the very frequency induces a
cheapness. Tickets for admission into paradise are sculptured out a
penny a letter, twopence a syllable, etc. It is all a mystery; and the
more I try to express my meaning (having none that is clear), the more I
flounder.
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