Do you think of this? Do you defy it? If not--if you invoke
it, do it through your acts toward your fellow-man. Have you to-day
done unto this man as you would he should do unto you? I pause for a
reply--none. Then shudder and repent, for the record even now is making
up against you in that high court from which there is no appeal. You,
gentlemen of the jury, are no hired advocates: you are not laboring for
blood-money. Though your responsibility to your God is equal to his,
you will not go to the bar of your Creator with blood--guiltless
blood--upon your consciences. You will not, as he will, in that awful
presence, on that eventful day, look around you for the accusing spirit
of him whom you consigned to the gibbet with a consciousness of his
innocence of murder. How will it be with you? (turning again to
Hardin.) Ah! how will it be with you? Still silent. Despite the
hardness of his features, mercy like a halo sweeps over them, and
speaks to you, gentlemen, eloquently: 'Acquit the accused!' Look over
yonder, gentlemen: within these walls is one awaiting your verdict in
tearless agony--she who but for this untoward event would now have been
happy as his bride: she who has cheered him in his prison-cell daily
with her presence and lovely soul! Hers, not his fate, is in your
hands.
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