The first instinct of man is the Lex Talionis. As you do to me--
says the savage--so I have a right to do to you. If you try to kill
me or mine, I have a right to kill you in return. Is this notion
uninspired? I should be sorry to say so. It is surely the first
form and the only possible first form of the sense of justice and
retribution. As a man sows so shall he reap. If a man does wrong
he deserves to be punished. No arguments will drive that great
divine law out of the human mind; for God has put it there.

After that inspiration comes a higher one. The man is taught to
say, I must not punish my enemy if I can avoid it. God must punish
him, either by the law of the land or by his providential judgments.
To this height David rises. In a seemingly lawless age and country,
under the most extreme temptation, he learns to say, 'Blessed be God
who hath kept me from avenging myself with my own hand.'

But still, it may be said, David calls down God's vengeance on his
enemies. He has not learnt to hate the sin and yet love the sinner.
Doubtless he has not: and it may have been right for his education,
and for the education of the human race through him, that he did
not. It may have been a good thing for him, as a future king; it
may be a good thing for many a man now, to learn the sinfulness of
sin, by feeling its effects in his own person; by writhing under
those miseries of body and soul, which wicked men can, and do
inflict on their fellow-creatures.

There are sins which a good man will not pity, but wage internecine
war against them; sins for which he is justified, if God have called
him thereto, to destroy the sinner in his sins. The traitor, the
tyrant, the ravisher, the robber, the extortioner, are not objects