Moses is not blamed in the Scripture
for taking part with the oppressed, and killing an Egyptian
persecutor. We are not told how Moses killed the Egyptian; but it
is quite as creditable to Moses to suppose that he killed the
Egyptian by giving him a buffet under the left ear, as by stabbing
him with a knife. It is true that the Saviour in the New Testament
tells His disciples to turn the left cheek to be smitten, after
they had received a blow on the right; but He was speaking to
people divinely inspired, or whom He intended divinely to inspire--
people selected by God for a particular purpose. He likewise tells
these people to part with various articles of raiment when asked
for them, and to go a-travelling without money, and take no thought
of the morrow. Are those exhortations carried out by very good
people in the present day? Do Quakers, when smitten on the right
cheek, turn the left to the smiter? When asked for their coat, do
they say, "Friend, take my shirt also?" Has the Dean of Salisbury
no purse? Does the Archbishop of Canterbury go to an inn, run up a
reckoning, and then say to his landlady, "Mistress, I have no
coin?" Assuredly the Dean has a purse, and a tolerably well-filled
one; and, assuredly, the Archbishop, on departing from an inn, not
only settles his reckoning, but leaves something handsome for the
servants, and does not say that he is forbidden by the gospel to
pay for what he has eaten, or the trouble he has given, as a
certain Spanish cavalier said he was forbidden by the statutes of
chivalry.
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