Page:Cihm12428.djvu/22

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

17

that when not in my employ he may my full approbation for theft?" This writer must me more foolish than we had even imagined him to be, if he would utter such a limited prohibition to his servant, and not caution him against ever stealing again. But what he supposes himself to say to a servant detected in theft, is as fallacious in argument as it would be foolish in act. It would indeed be as wrong for "a clergyman's" servant to steal after leaving his master's employment as before; but it would not be as wrong for his married servant to marry another woman after his wife's death as before, as every one but this writer must know. But this writer resorts to a second illustration. He says, (page 6) "When Hannah says she will give her expected son unto the Lord 'all the days of life,' she might just as well be supposed to intend keeping him to herself after his death, as the restriction in Leviticus be explained away as temporary—contingent on the life of the first wife." In this second illustration the Magazine writer supposes Hannah might intend an impossible thing, as in his first illustration he supposed himself to do a foolish thing. Hannah might have kept her son's dead body after his death, had she survived him, but her son would have been beyond her reach. We fear our readers may think us trifling with them by our noticing such nonsense; but we cannot resist the desire to add one or two illustrative examples of this writer's logic. For example, from the prohibition, Leviticus xxii. 28, "Whether it be a eow or ewe, ye shall not kill her and her young one in one day;" common sense infers that to kill them on different days was lawful; but according to this writer's logic, it would be as unlawful to kill them on different days as to kill them on the same day. Again in Leviticus x. 9, it is said "Do not drink wine nor any strong drink, thou nor thy sons with the, when ye go into the tabernacle . . . . . . . . lest ye die." Common sense would infer that the parties addressed might drink wine at other times; but the logic of this writer would make them teetotallers at all times