The atrociousness of a crime, depends greatly upon the nature, character, and condition of the victim.  To steal is a crime, whoever the thief, or whatever the plunder.  To steal bread from a full man, is theft; to steal it from a starving man, is both theft and murder.  If I steal my neighbor’s property, the crime consists not in the nature of the article, but in shifting its external relation from him to me.  But when I take my neighbor himself, and first make him property, and then my property, the latter act, which was the sole crime in the former case, dwindles to a mere appendage.  The sin in stealing a man does not consist in transferring, from its owner to another, that which is already property, but in turning personality into property.  True, the attributes of man still remain, but the rights and immunities which grow out of them are annihilated.  It is the first law of reason and revelation to regard things and beings as they are; and the sum of religion, to feel and act toward them according to their nature and value.  Knowingly to treat them otherwise, is sin; and the degree of violence done to their nature, relations, and value, measures its guilt.  When things are sundered which God has indissolubly joined, or confounded in one, which he has separated by infinite extremes; when sacred and eternal distinctions, which he has garnished with glory, are derided and set at nought, then, if ever, sin reddens in its “scarlet dye.”  The sin specified in the passage, is that of doing violence to the nature of a man—­his intrinsic value and relations as a rational being, and blotting out the exalted distinction stamped upon him by his Maker.  In the verse preceding, and in that which follows, the same principle is laid down.  Verse 15, “He then smiteth his father or his mother shall surely be put to death.” Verse 17, “He that curseth his father or his mother, shall surely be put to death.” If a Jew smote his neighbor, the law merely smote him in return.  But if that same blow were given to a parent, the law struck the smiter dead.  Why this difference in the punishment of the same act, inflicted on different persons?  Answer—­God guards the parental relation with peculiar care.  It is the centre of human relations.  To violate that, is to violate all.  Whoever trampled on that, showed that no relation had any sacredness in his eyes—­that he was unfit to move among human relations who had violated one so sacred and tender.—­Therefore, the Mosaic law uplifted his bleeding corpse, and brandished the ghastly terror around the parental relation to guard it from impious inroads.

But why the difference in the penalty since the act was the same?  The sin had divers aggravations.

1.  The relation violated was obvious—­the distinction between parents and others, manifest, dictated by natural affection—­a law of the constitution.