i

i was at wedge bay. it was raining. wondering what i should do, i remembered the great caves along the shore. for ages the waves had been at work scooping out for me a place of refuge for such a day as this. i put on my coat, slipped a novel in the pocket, and set off along the sands. i soon found a sheltered spot in which i was able to defy the weather, and to watch the waves or read my book just as the fancy took me. as a matter of fact, i had not much to read. the book was sir walter scott’s kenilworth, and the bookmark was already near the end. i read therefore until, in the very climax of the tragic close, i suddenly came upon a text. or perhaps it was less a text than a reference to a text, casually uttered in a moment of great excitement by one of the principal characters in the story. but it acted on my mind as the lever at the switch acts upon the oncoming railway train. in a flash, the novel and all its thrilling interest were left far behind, and i was 145flying along an entirely new track. and here are the words that so adroitly changed the current of my thought:

‘“oh, if there be judgement in heaven, thou hast well deserved it,” said foster, “and wilt meet it! thou hast destroyed her by means of her best affections—it is a seething of the kid in the mother’s milk.”’

almost involuntarily i closed the book, slipped it back into my pocket, and sat looking out to sea lost in a brown but interesting study.

ii

‘thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk!’ the striking prohibition occurs three times—twice in the book of exodus, and once in the book of deuteronomy. i do not know on what principle we assess the relative value and importance of texts; but, surely, a great commandment, thrice emphatically reiterated, ought not to be treated as beneath our notice. i find that the interdict applies primarily to an ancient eastern custom. all nations have their own idea as to the special delicacy of certain viands. we british people fancy lamb and sucking-pig, and feel no shame in destroying the tiny creatures as soon as they are born. the predilection of the arab was for a new-born kid; 146and when he wished to adorn his table with a particularly toothsome morsel, it was his habit to serve up the kid boiled in milk taken from the mother. it was against this favourite and familiar dish that the stern and repeated prohibition was launched. i do not know if there was any practical or utilitarian reason, based on hygienic or medical grounds, for the emphatic decree. perhaps, or perhaps not. some of the old commandments relating to animals seem to have been framed for no other purpose than to inculcate a certain gentleness and courtesy in our attitude towards these poorer relatives of ours. ‘thou shalt not kill a cow and her calf on the same day’; ‘thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn’; and so on. it is difficult to see any real reason why the ewe and her lamb, or the cow and her calf, should not go to the shambles together. but it was strictly forbidden. and similarly, ‘thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk.’ the finer feelings are certainly shocked at the thought of the cow and the calf going together to the slaughter, and at the idea of boiling the newly born and newly slain kid in the milk of its mother; and the most obvious moral seems to be that we are not to treat the creatures of the field and the forest in any way that grates and jars upon those finer instincts. as i sat watching the foam playing with the strands of seaweed, it seemed to me that, 147if ever i am asked to preach in support of the society for the prevention of cruelty to animals, i should have here a theme all ready to my hand. and i felt glad that i had read kenilworth.

iii

but the prohibition goes much farther than that. it enshrines a tremendous principle, a principle that is nowhere else so clearly stated. sir walter scott evidently saw that; and no exposition could be clearer than his. the circumstances were, briefly, these. the countess of leicester was a prisoner. just outside her room at the castle was a trapdoor. it was supported by iron bolts; but it was so arranged that even if the bolts were drawn, the trapdoor would still be held in its place by springs. yet the weight of a mouse would cause it to yield and to precipitate its burden into the vault below. varney and foster decided to draw these bolts so that, if the countess attempted to escape, the trap would destroy her. later on, foster heard the tread of a horse in the court-yard, and then a whistle similar to that which was the earl’s usual signal. the next moment the countess’s chamber opened, and instantly the trapdoor gave way. there was a rushing sound, a heavy fall, a faint groan, and all was over! at the same instant varney called in at the window, ‘is the 148bird caught? is the deed done?’ deep down in the vault foster could see a heap of white clothes, like a snowdrift. it flashed upon him that the noise that he had heard was not the earl’s signal at all, but merely varney’s imitation, designed to deceive the countess and lure her to her doom. she had rushed out to welcome her husband, and had miserably perished. in his indignation, foster turned upon varney. ‘oh, if there be judgement in heaven, thou hast deserved it,’ he said, ‘and wilt meet it! thou hast destroyed her by means of her best affections. it is a seething of the kid in the mother’s milk!’

at that touchstone the inner meaning of the interdict stands revealed. the mother’s milk is nature’s beautiful provision for the life and sustenance of the kid. thou shalt not pervert that which was intended to be a ministry of life into an instrument of destruction. the wifely instinct that led the countess to rush forth to welcome her lord was one of the loveliest things in her womanhood, and varney used it as the agency by which he destroyed her. she was lured to her doom by means of her best affections. charles lamb points out, in his tales from shakespeare, that iago compassed the death of the fair desdemona in precisely the same way. ‘so mischievously did this artful villain lay his plots to turn the gentle qualities of this 149innocent lady into her destruction and make a net for her out of her own goodness to entrap her!’ it is this that the prohibition forbids. thou shalt not take the most sacred things in life and apply them to base and ignoble ends. thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk.

iv

the possibilities of application are simply infinite. there is nothing high and holy that cannot be converted into an engine of destruction. a girl is fond of music. the impulse is a lofty and admirable one. but it may easily be used to lure her away from the best things into a life of frivolity, voluptuousness, and sensation. a boy is fond of nature. he loves to climb the mountain, row on the river, or scour the bush. nothing could be better. but if it leads him to forsake the place of worship, to forget god, to fling to the winds the faith of his boyhood, and to settle down to a life of animalism and materialism, he has been destroyed by means of his best affections. or take our love of society and of revelry. there are few things more enjoyable than to sit by the fireside, or on the beach, with a few really congenial companions, to talk, and tell stories, and recall old times; to laugh, to eat, and to drink together. talking and 150laughing and eating and drinking seem inseparable at such times. and yet out of that human, and therefore divine, impulse see the evils that arise! look at our great national drink curse, with its tale of squalor and misery and shame! did these men mean to be drunkards when first they entered the gaily lit bar-room? nothing was farther from their minds. they were following a true instinct—the desire for companionship and congenial society. they have been lured to their doom, like sir walter scott’s heroine, by means of their best affections.

v

and what about love? love is a lovely thing, or why should we be so fond of love-stories? the love of a man for a maid, and the love of a maid for a man, are surely among the very sweetest and most sacred things in life. no story is so fascinating as the story of a courtship. and that is good, altogether good. every man who has won the affection of a true, sweet, beautiful girl feels that a new sanction has entered into life. he is conscious of a new stimulus towards purity and goodness. and every girl who has won the heart of a good, brave, great-hearted man feels that life has become a grander and a holier thing for her. as shakespeare says:

151indeed i know

of no more subtle master under heaven

than is the maiden passion for a maid,

not only to keep down the base in man,

but to teach high thoughts and amiable words,

and courtliness, and the desire for fame,

and love of truth, and all that makes a man.

lord lytton illustrates this magic force in his last days of pompeii. he tells us that glaucus, the athenian, ‘had seen ione, bright, pure, unsullied, in the midst of the gayest and most profligate gallants of pompeii, charming rather than awing the boldest into respect, and changing the very nature of the most sensual and the least ideal as, by her intellectual and refining spells, she reversed the fable of circe, and converted the animals into men.’ here, then, is something altogether good. it is clearly designed to minister new life to all who come beneath its spell. and yet the sordid fact remains that, through the degradation of this same high and holy impulse, thousands of young people make sad shipwreck.

vi

but of all things designed to minister life to the world, the cross is the greatest and most awful. its possibilities of regeneration are simply infinite; and in its case the danger is therefore all the greater. 152‘we preach christ crucified,’ wrote paul, ‘unto the jews a stumbling-block, and unto the greeks foolishness, but unto them which are called, both jews and greeks, christ the power of god and the wisdom of god.’ it is the most urgent and insistent note of the new testament that a man may convert into the instrument of his condemnation and destruction that awful sacrifice which was designed for his redemption. it is the sin of sins; the sin unpardonable; the sin so impressively forbidden by that ancient and thrice reiterated commandment whose significance sir walter scott pointed out to me in the cave by the side of the sea.