September 1928
T h e
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
536
This is a well-established principle of jurisprudence. Crimes o f impulse and of deliberation are not dealt with equally, and it is the time factor that largely determines the judgment. Let it be clearly proved that one commits a crime under the impulse o f great and sudden atiger, and especially if the anger has great provocation, he is rightly punished ; but the punishment is tempered by the circum stances. If,(however, it is shown that the crime was pre meditated and planned, the criminal is, or should be, given the limit of the law. He had pime to consider the enormity of the deed and to weigh its consequences, so that his guilt is such as to leave no grounds for mercy. It is our duty, in our judgment o f the cases before us, to keep this principle in mind; because, as we shall see, it will greatly influence our judgment. In Peter’s case, the motive, baldly stated, leaves him without excuse. W e say, “ He denied his Lord to save himself; hence he was a coward, a de serter in the face of the enemy, and an ingrate.” But, if we are governed, as we should be, by the principle we have stated, it will qualify our judgment of this man. ’ P eter “ R emembered ” There is one illuminating statement in the record. When Peter heard the cock crow, he “ remembered,” and when he “ remembered,” he “ wept bitterly.” Out from
o f self-interest and self-preservation. It is the plane upon which our race now lives and moves and has its being. Peter’s act had behind it not only the individual natural impulse, but the whole weight of a total human instinct developed through untold, generations of struggle and conflict. So powerful, so urgent, is this instinct that it can be neutralized only by some more powerful moral force. Such a force, however, is rational and deliberative. But, such circumstances as these do not allow time for de liberation, so that, unless the moral quality has become so habitual that it gets into action automatically, the instinct of self-preservation controls; that is, the person moves in obedience to instinct and not moral reason. The thing that reveals real character is not so much what a person does under impulse as what he would do under deliberation. Had Peter been given the time to deliberately weigh the question of what he would do, deny his Lord or pre serve himself, who doubts what the decision would have been? This is what shows what, at bottom, the man is. It is not so much the act as the calculating motive of the act. This is why, in a given case of two sins, the greater, per se, may- carry the lesser culpability. Peter’s motive was self-preservation, but it was not deliberative self- preservation. It was impulsive, and our judgment should be tempered by that fact.
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