Article #129 - Capital Punishment

 

Question: It is queried, “Ought Capital punishment to be abolished.”

 

            To this interrogation, Reason, Justice, Inspiration, written and living, All the gifts or properties of the mind, whose tendency is to conduct the Earthly probationer towards the polar

Star of Truth, the revelations of duty are thine --All the angelic feelings, or arch-angelic quali-

fications of the Soul, whose province is to enlarge, amplify and refine the same, after the sublime

model of virtue established there, as a measure or talent of Divine bequest, graced with those

vestments of pristine loveliness and purity which adorn the ennobling attributes of its arche-

typal spirit. All of these, and every voice that can heave accents of praise and Love from

the hallowed temple of the Soul respond in feeling tones with an emphatic, “Yes.”

 

[There are twenty-one pages of similar prose, with many Biblical references. It is signed Fenelon, 3 mo. 1851]