Lamb To The Slaughter Quotes

And like lambs to a slaughter we shall follow...

They say that childhood forms us, that those early influences are the key to everything. Is the peace of the soul so easily won? Simply the inevitable result of a happy childhood. What makes childhood happy? Parental harmony? Good health? Security? Might not a happy childhood be the worst possible preparation for life? Like leading a lamb to the slaughter.

The Emperor wishes me to send my innocent little lamb to the slaughter. No. Instead, I'll send him my anaconda.

Satan, on the contrary, is thin, ascetic and a fanatical devotee of logic. He reads Machiavelli, Ignatius of Loyola, Marx and Hegel; he is cold and unmerciful to mankind, out of a kind of mathematical mercifulness. He is damned always to do that which is most repugnant to him: to become a slaughterer, in order to abolish slaughtering, to sacrifice lambs so that no more lambs may be slaughtered, to whip people with knouts so that they may learn not to let themselves be whipped, to strip himself of every scruple in the name of a higher scrupulousness, and to challenge the hatred of mankind because of his love for it--an abstract and geometric love.

A human body in no way resembles those that were born for ravenousness; it hath no hawk’s bill, no sharp talon, no roughness of teeth, no such strength of stomach or heat of digestion, as can be sufficient to convert or alter such heavy and fleshy fare. But if you will contend that you were born to an inclination to such food as you have now a mind to eat, do you then yourself kill what you would eat. But do it yourself, without the help of a chopping-knife, mallet or axe, as wolves, bears, and lions do, who kill and eat at once. Rend an ox with thy teeth, worry a hog with thy mouth, tear a lamb or a hare in pieces, and fall on and eat it alive as they do. But if thou had rather stay until what thou eat is to become dead, and if thou art loath to force a soul out of its body, why then dost thou against nature eat an animate thing? There is nobody that is willing to eat even a lifeless and a dead thing even as it is; so they boil it, and roast it, and alter it by fire and medicines, as it were, changing and quenching the slaughtered gore with thousands of sweet sauces, that the palate being thereby deceived may admit of such uncouth fare.

I looked at the stained-glass image of the lamb in the window above me, but that only reminded me that lambs are famous for being led to slaughter, or sometimes hanging out with lions in ill-advised relationships.

I think one of the sweetest lessons taught by the Prophet, and yet one of the saddest, occurred close to the time of his death. He was required to leave his plan and vision of the Rocky Mountains and give himself up to face a court of supposed justice. These are his words: 'I am going like a lamb to the slaughter; but I am calm as a summer's morning; I have a conscience void of offense towards God, and towards all men' (D&C 135:4). That statement of the Prophet teaches us obedience to law and the importance of having a clear conscience toward God and toward our fellowmen. The Prophet Joseph Smith taught these principles--by example. There was to be one great final lesson before his mortal life ended. He was incarcerated in Carthage Jail with his brother Hyrum, with John Taylor, and with Willard Richards. The angry mob stormed the jail; they came up the stairway, blasphemous in their cursing, heavily armed, and began to fire at will. Hyrum was hit and died. John Taylor took several balls of fire within his bosom. The Prophet Joseph, with his pistol in hand, was attempting to defend his life and that of his brethren, and yet he could tell from the pounding on the door that this mob would storm that door and would kill John Taylor and Willard Richards in an attempt to kill him. And so his last great act here upon the earth was to leave the door and lead Willard Richards to safety, throw the gun on the floor, and go to the window, that they might see him, that the attention of this ruthless mob might be focused upon him rather than the others. Joseph Smith gave his life. Willard Richards was spared, and John Taylor recovered from his wounds. 'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends' (John 15:13). The Prophet Joseph Smith taught us love--by example.

To give yourself over to another body That’s all you want really To be out of your own and consumed by another To swim inside the skin of your lover Not have to breathe Not have to think But you can’t live on love And salt water’s no drink We're dying of thirst so we feast on each other The sea is still our violent mother The blood round here pours down like water Each wave a lamb lead to the slaughter And like children that she just can’t teach We break, and break, and break And break ourselves upon the beach- Body of Water

Whoever said heroism was fair?" she asked. "It's the unfairest thing of all. 'Come, oh human child, and learn to swing a sword for the sake of people who've decided the thing you're best for is dying in their name.' We were lambs for the slaughter, all of us, and if we've survived, it's not because we're special. Come on. Let's be heroes one more time.

And from far away, Aelin heard another woman’s voice. Make sure that they’re punished someday. Every last one of them. They will be, she’d sworn to Kaltain. They had lied. Had betrayed Elena and Erilea, as they had believed themselves betrayed. Their green sun-drenched world rippled away ahead. Groaning, Aelin climbed to her feet. She was no lamb to slaughter. No sacrifice on an altar of the greater good. And she was not done yet.

We are faithful not to the triumphant golden eagle (ironically, also an imperial symbol of power in Rome) but to the slaughtered Lamb.

The Christian icon is not the Stars and Stripes but a cross-flag, and its emblem is not a donkey, an elephant, or an eagle, but a slaughtered lamb.

But she'd wanted him there and there he was. A lamb ready for slaughter.

Maybe da Vinci didn’t serve lamb in his painting of the Last Supper, but there was room for interpretation. Jesus himself was the lamb led to the slaughter.

Always afraid, never a coward

Charis herself gave up Christianity a long time ago. For one thing, the Bible is full of meat: animals being sacrificed, lambs, bullocks, doves. Cain was right to offer up the vegetables, God was wrong to refuse them. And there's too much blood: people in the Bible are always having their blood spilled, blood on their hands, their blood licked up by dogs. There are too many slaughters, too much suffering, too many tears. She used to think some of the Eastern religions would be more serene; she was a Buddhist for a while, before she discovered how many hells they had. Most religions are so intent on punishment.

I believe in a messy, imperfect world where we just, collectively or individually, figure things out.

You are the lamb. I am the shepherd. I will control your every move. I will direct and govern you until you learn your place. And I will guide you along the path to your slaughter.

Perfect crime,' he said softly. 'Yes?' 'Persuade an innocent, idealistic young girl that the future of the human race depends on her sacrificing her own life. She will come into hospital as trustingly as a lamb to the slaughter. She will welcome the implantation of a baby that will kill her. She'll lie there while her brain is destroyed for nine whole months, and no police will arrest you, no court will judge you, you'll get away scot free. At the end of nine months she'll be taken off life support and she'll be completely dead. And no one will be blamed.

In the whole vast domain of living nature there reigns an open violence, a kind of prescriptive fury which arms all the creatures to their common doom. As soon as you leave the inanimate kingdom, you find the decree of violent death inscribed on the very frontiers of life. You feel it already in the vegetable kingdom: from the great catalpa to the humblest herb, how many plants die, and how many are killed. But from the moment you enter the animal kingdom, this law is suddenly in the most dreadful evidence. A power of violence at once hidden and palpable … has in each species appointed a certain number of animals to devour the others. Thus there are insects of prey, reptiles of prey, birds of prey, fishes of prey, quadrupeds of prey. There is no instant of time when one creature is not being devoured by another. Over all these numerous races of animals man is placed, and his destructive hand spares nothing that lives. He kills to obtain food and he kills to clothe himself. He kills to adorn himself, he kills in order to attack, and he kills in order to defend himself. He kills to instruct himself and he kills to amuse himself. He kills to kill. Proud and terrible king, he wants everything and nothing resists him. From the lamb he tears its guts and makes his harp resound ... from the wolf his most deadly tooth to polish his pretty works of art; from the elephant his tusks to make a toy for his child - his table is covered with corpses ... And who in all of this will exterminate him who exterminates all others? Himself. It is man who is charged with the slaughter of man ... So it is accomplished ... the first law of the violent destruction of living creatures. The whole earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but a vast altar upon which all that is living must be sacrificed without end, without measure, without pause, until the consummation of things, until evil is extinct, until the death of death.

Groaning, Aelin climbed to her feet. She was no lamb to slaughter. No sacrifice on an altar of the greater good. And she was not done yet.

Personally, I think it's right here on the premises." "Probably right under our very noses. What you think, Jack?" And in the other room, Mary Maloney began to giggle.

So we were back in the Children's Pavilion, and there was again the familiar scene: the mothers with their nearly dead, the false face of mercy, the Slaughter of the Innocents.

Once you slaughter the lamb, you are capable of everything and anything, and the world is yours.

The books are calling. I must make friends.

The Emperor wishes me to send my innocent little lamb to the slaughter. No. Instead, I’ll send him my anaconda.

Like a lamb to the slaughter.

When the slaughtered Lamb is seen `in the midst of' the divine throne in heaven (5:6; cf. 7:17), the meaning is that Christ's sacrificial death belongs to the way God rules the world.

For all the talk about the need to be a likable "team player," many people work in a fairly cutthroat environment that would seem to be especially challenging to those who possess the recommended traits. Cheerfulness, upbeatness, and compliance: these are the qualities of subordinates -- of servants rather than masters, women (traditionally, anyway) rather than men. After advising his readers to overcome the bitterness and negativity engendered by frequent job loss and to achieve a perpetually sunny outlook, management guru Harvey Mackay notes cryptically that "the nicest, most loyal, and most submissive employees are often the easiest people to fire." Given the turmoil in the corporate world, the prescriptions of niceness ring of lambs-to-the-slaughter.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,          s yet he opened not his mouth;      t like a  u lamb that is led to the slaughter,         and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,         so he opened not his mouth.

One thing people wonder is why the Jews did not defend themselves, why we were like lambs led to the slaughter. In truth, many Jews fought back bravely. But the Holocaust was so well planned that we were overwhelmed. It started with little acts of racism and discrimination and eventually led to the murder of millions of innocents. We must never think the Holocaust cannot happen again.

So sending him off to middle school like a lamb to the slaughter …,” Dad answered angrily, but he didn’t even finish his sentence because he saw me in the mirror looking up. “What’s a lamb to the slaughter?” I asked sleepily. “Go back to sleep, Auggie,” Dad said softly. “Everyone will stare at me at school,” I said, suddenly crying.

Sometimes you have to pull a knife.

Personally, I think it's right here on the premises." "Probably right under our very noses. What you think, Jack?" And in the other room, Mary Maloney began to giggle.

Rescuers are sacrificial lambs slaughtered on the alters of victims.

Only a fool, seeing a slaughtered lamb, fails to take precautions against the wolf. A wise man considers also the fox.

And she turned to her table and smiled at a sweet blonde demure lamb. The word 'slaughter' came to Evelyn's mind.

Today was the day. My Slaughtered Lamb Bookstore and Bar was reopening.

Wherein a Werewolf, a Wicche, a Vampire, and a Demon Discuss the Likelihood of a Zombie Apocalypse

I went from being the lamb with the self-destructive path—to her own slaughter—to a stone that was unbending and powerful.

We promised to believe each other. To be with each other to the end. Until, as bells, we rested. Or, until as lambs, we went to the slaughter.

A FREE MARKET SHOULD MEAN EVERYTHING IS FREE.

Maybe because he’d been exiled from paradise by a beast of his own making. Because he’d decided Freedom was home, and he couldn’t come back. That’s what having a home will do to you. Maybe.

Is it not a reproach that man is a carnivorous animal? True, he can and does live, in a great measure, by preying on other animals; but this is a miserable way - as anyone who will go to snaring rabbits, or slaughtering lambs, may learn - and he shall be regarded as a benefactor of his race who shall teach man to confine himself to a more innocent and wholesome diet. Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.

The slaughter was slow, every single act carried out with precision and care. Once he’d sheared her like a lamb, she was left on the cold floor, bleeding out in crimson rivers that followed the path of the cracks in the concrete.

Who is she, after all? Not a member of the Party. Not even a Russian...What can she do, really, but watch the ginger-haired sacrificial lamb get slaughtered? One wrong move and Florence herself might be on the chopping block herself

When you’re the Woman Upstairs, nobody thinks of you first. Nobody calls you before anyone else, or sends you the first postcard. Once your mother dies, nobody loves you best of all. It’s a small thing, you might think; and maybe it depends upon your temperament; maybe for some people it’s a small thing. But for me, in that cul-de-sac outside Aunt Baby’s, with my father and aunt done dissecting death and shuffling off to bed behind the crimson farmhouse door, preparing for morning mass as blameless as lambs and as lifeless as the slaughtered—I felt forsaken by hope. I felt I’d been seen, and seen clearly, and discarded, dropped back into the undiscriminated pile like a shell upon the shore.

How did these women do it? What was their secret? What unexpected, mystical orifice on their body did they allow these men entry to that in turn made them do whatever unreasonable thing they wanted? Or was it that they simply told them what to do and when to do it, and the imposed restriction of choice made their boyfriends feel safely shepherded rather than ready for slaughter? Had I been treating men too much like adults and not enough like little directionless lambs?

Say!” Benedict exclaimed. “Why don’t you save her, Hastings?” Simon took one look at Lady Bridgerton (who at that point had her hand firmly wrapped around Macclesfield’s forearm) and decided he’d rather be branded an eternal coward. “Since we haven’t been introduced, I’m sure it would be most improper,” he improvised. “I’m sure it wouldn’t,” Anthony returned. “You’re a duke.” “So?” “So?” Anthony echoed. “Mother would forgive any impropriety if it meant gaining an audience for Daphne with a duke.” “Now look here,” Simon said hotly, “I’m not some sacrificial lamb to be slaughtered on the altar of your mother.” “You have spent a lot of time in Africa, haven’t you?” Colin quipped. Simon ignored him. “Besides, your sister said—” All three Bridgerton heads swung round in his direction. Simon immediately realized he’d blundered. Badly. “You’ve met Daphne?” Anthony queried, his voice just a touch too polite for Simon’s comfort. Before Simon could even reply, Benedict leaned in ever-so-slightly closer, and asked, “Why didn’t you mention this?” “Yes,” Colin said, his mouth utterly serious for the first time that evening. “Why?” Simon glanced from brother to brother and it became perfectly clear why Daphne must still be unmarried. This belligerent trio would scare off all but the most determined— or stupid— of suitors. Which would probably explain Nigel Berbrooke. “Actually,” Simon said, “I bumped into her in the hall as I was making my way into the ballroom. It was”— he glanced rather pointedly at the Bridgertons—“ rather obvious that she was a member of your family, so I introduced myself.” Anthony turned to Benedict. “Must have been when she was fleeing Berbrooke.” Benedict turned to Colin. “What did happen to Berbrooke? Do you know?” Colin shrugged. “Haven’t the faintest. Probably left to nurse his broken heart.” Or broken head, Simon thought acerbically. “Well, that explains everything, I’m sure,” Anthony said, losing his overbearing big-brother expression and looking once again like a fellow rake and best friend. “Except,” Benedict said suspiciously, “why he didn’t mention it.” “Because I didn’t have the chance,” Simon bit off, about ready to throw his arms up in exasperation. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Anthony, you have a ridiculous number of siblings, and it takes a ridiculous amount of time to be introduced to all of them.” “There are only two of us present,” Colin pointed out. “I’m going home,” Simon announced. “The three of you are mad.” Benedict, who had seemed to be the most protective of the brothers, suddenly grinned. “You don’t have a sister, do you?” “No, thank God.

The danger, of course, existed in her curiosity, her intelligence, and her stubbornly observant eyes. She had to go away before she found out too much. No one wished her, personally, any harm; she was small and pretty and no one would want to hurt her, but if she became a danger she must suffer.

The same Bible that condemned me held in it the promises that could save me. I just had to believe it. “It” being what it said about Him: God. Jesus had the guilty in mind when He was hung high and stretched out wide. On it, He died in my place, for my sin. He, bare-bodied and face set on joy, became as a slaughtered lamb underneath the wrath of God. You would think His Father would have a better memory than that. Didn’t He know that that wrath was mine? It even had my name on it. But He knew. His justice wouldn’t allow Him to forget. His love is what He wanted me to know and remember, and I did.

Jane, I never meant to wound you thus.  If the man who had but one little ewe lamb that was dear to him as a daughter, that ate of his bread and drank of his cup, and lay in his bosom, had by some mistake slaughtered it at the shambles, he would not have rued his bloody blunder more than I now rue mine.  Will you ever forgive me?” Reader, I forgave him at the moment and on the spot.  There was such deep remorse in his eye, such true pity in his tone, such manly energy in his manner; and besides, there was such unchanged love in his whole look and mien—I forgave him all: yet not in words, not outwardly; only at my heart’s core.

Millwall fans are an earthy bunch, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but many of them lack social graces, and the demographics are far removed from architect’s impressions of the New Den, which is a superb ground. It must be said, however, that their chant of, “Meerrrr!” sounds more like a flock of lambs being led to the slaughter. I don’t wish to disillusion the Millwall faithful, for they may feel that the “Meerrrr!” chant makes them sound tough ….. but it doesn’t. Trust me, from the East Upper Stand it sounds more like a bleat than a roar. When we got to London Bridge – still considered to be part of the Millwall Manor – I observed a man in his late thirties (old enough to know better) give the “Meerrrrr!” bleat, and it had a strange effect on him, for he immediately started to swagger. His knees pushed out to the side, he rolled his shoulders and his face lit up with an unpleasant smirk, as if to say, “Did you see me? I said Meerrrr!

I’m nothing but a thought in the mind of God, I’m Satan’s slave; I open my eyes and flee, I’m mankind, I worship, and I kill, All in the name of Love, hate I’m the slaughtered lamb, I’m luzbel I’m the one paying for your sins, I’m your son; I am your mom and dad, I’m the one, who worships God, I’m a killer and a saint, I’m just a thought in the mind of God. I laugh and I suffer, I get killed, and I kill others, I’m nothing but a thought in the mind of God I’m compassion and rage, I love, I cheat, and I lie, I tell the truth, I’m dead, I’m alive, I’m in hell, the place people called paradise, I am just a thought in the mind of God

Lakes, carillonst, Pools and bells, Fifes and freshets, Harps and wells; Flutes and rivers, Streams, bassoons, Geysers, trumpets, Chimes lagoons, Hear the music, Drink the water, As we poor lambs All go to slaughter. I love you Eliot. Good-bye. I cry. Tears and violins. Hearts and flowers, Flowers and tears. Rosewater, good-bye.

Man's destructive hand spares nothing that lives; he kills to feed himself, he kills to clothe himself, he kills to adorn himself, he kills to attack, he kills to defend himself, he kills to instruct himself, he kills to amuse himself, he kills for the sake of killing. Proud and terrible king, he needs everything and nothing resists him ... from the lamb he tears its guts and makes his harp resound ... from the wolf his most deadly tooth to polish his pretty works of art; from the elephant his tusks to make a toy for his child - his table is covered with corpses ... And who in all of this will exterminate him who exterminates all others? Himself. It is man who is charged with the slaughter of man ... So it is accomplished ... the first law of the violent destruction of living creatures. The whole earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but a vast altar upon which all that is living must be sacrificed without end, without measure, without pause, until the consummation of things, until evil is extinct, until the death of death.

You see, dervish, it wasn't always like this. Violence wasn't my element, but it is now. When God forgets about us down here, it falls upon us common people to toughen up and restore justice. So next time you talk to him, you tell him that let him know that when he abandons his lambs, they won't meekly wait to be slaughtered. They will turn into wolves.

The silence and the empty board sidewalks began to give Eddie the creeps. He remembered Roland’s tale of Susan’s final ride into Mejis in the back of a cart, standing with her hands tied in front of her and a noose around her neck. Her road had been empty, too. At first. Then, not far from the intersection of the Great Road and the Silk Ranch Road, Susan and her captors had passed a single farmer, a man with what Roland had called lamb-slaughterer’s eyes. Later she would be pelted with vegetables and sticks, even with stones, but this lone farmer had been first, standing there with his handful of cornshucks, which he had tossed almost gently at her as she passed on her way to . . . well, on her way to charyou tree, the Reap Fair of the Old People. As

Jane, I never meant to wound you thus. If the man who had but one little ewe lamb that was dear to him as a daughter, that ate of his bread and drank of his cup, and lay in his bosom, had by some mistake slaughtered it at the shambles, he would not have rued his bloody blunder more than I now rue mine. Will you ever forgive me?” Reader, I forgave him at the moment and on the spot.

He is damned always to do that which is most repugnant to him: to become a slaughterer, in order to abolish slaughtering, to sacrifice lambs so that no more lambs may be slaughtered, to whip people with knouts so that they may learn not to let themselves be whipped, to strip himself of every scruple in the name of a higher scrupulousness, and to challenge the hatred of mankind because of his love for it—an abstract and geometric love.

Immanuelle stared at him—this man who’d used his lies to make himself a martyr. He thought he was the one who made the true sacrifice, but he couldn’t be more wrong. It was not the Prophet who bore Bethel, bound to his back like a millstone. It was all of the innocent girls and women—like Miriam and Leah—who suffered and died at the hands of men who exploited them. They were Bethel’s sacrifice. They were the bones upon which the Church was built. Their pain was the great shame of the Father’s faith, and all of Bethel shared in it. Men like the Prophet, who lurked and lusted after the innocent, who found joy in their pain, who brutalized and broke them down until they were nothing, exploiting those they were meant to protect. The Church, which not only excused and forgave the sins of its leaders but enabled them: with the Protocol and the market stocks, with muzzles and lashings and twisted Scriptures. It was the whole of them, the heart of Bethel itself, that made certain every woman who lived behind its gate had only two choices: resignation, or ruin. No more, Immanuelle thought. No more punishments or Protocols. No more muzzles or contrition. No more pyres or gutting blades. No more girls beaten or broken silent. No more brides in white gowns lying like lambs on the altar for slaughter. She would see an end to all of it.

My culture gives me no categories to view suffering—especially suffering at the hands of an oppressor—as victory. My culture sees suffering only as defeat, as evil. It never sees suffering as a means of victory. This is why I need to read John’s vision about what’s really going on from God’s perspective to correct my American, self-serving, “I will defend my rights at all costs” mind-set. I need to follow the slaughtered Lamb wherever He goes, so that I can reign with Him in victory. THE

To give yourself over to another body That’s all you want really, To be out of your own and consumed by another. To swim inside the skin of your lover... Not have to break Not have to think But you can’t live in love And salt waters no drink. We’re dying of thirst so we feast on each other. The sea is still our violent mother The blood round here pours down Like water, each wave a lamb Led to the slaughter. And like children that she just can’t teach We break, and break, and break And break ourselves upon the beach...

Life is a solitary confinement , Every second is a punishment - of a crime , that was never committed , Or perhaps, - the biggest crime of my age , is the silence of the soul. You suffer silently - as a sacrificial lamb to be slaughtered - for a cause that is greater than your own existence ! They label you as a hero , - a super human with super human strength . Yes , indeed . The wars you fight every day - every moment with your demons , and of course the price of being a hero ! Solitude , - A gift from god - A curse on your own self.

I could not swallow this. I told him that, if the sheep had speech, they would tell a different tale. I felt that the cruel custom ought to be stopped. I thought of the story of Buddha, but I also saw that the task was beyond my capacity. I hold today the same opinion as I held then. To my mind the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body. I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man. But he who has not qualified himself for such service is unable to afford to it any protection. I must go through more self-purification and sacrifice, before I can hope to save these lambs from this unholy sacrifice. Today I think I must die pining for this self-purification and sacrifice. It is my constant prayer that there may be born on earth some great spirit, man or woman, fired with divine pity, who will deliver us from this heinous sin, save the lives of the innocent creatures, and purify the temple. How is it that Bengal with all its knowledge, intelligence, sacrifice, and emotion tolerates this slaughter?

Is it not a reproach that man is a carnivorous animal? True, he can and does live, in a great measure, by preying on other animals; but this is a miserable way—as any one who will go to snaring rabbits, or slaughtering lambs, may learn—and he will be regarded as a benefactor of his race who shall teach man to confine himself to a more innocent and wholesome diet. Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.

Is it not a reproach that man is a carnivorous animal? True, he can and does live, in a great measure, by preying on other animals; but this is a miserable way — as any one who will go to snaring rabbits, or slaughtering lambs, may learn — and he will be regarded as a benefactor of his race who shall teach man to confine himself to a more innocent and wholesome diet. Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.

nasty little dragon. It wouldn’t happen again. He was St George and he would slay the dragon. That was how it worked, wasn’t it? He knew the story. He was a hero, a patron saint. He was England. This country was his. His people were marching towards him from all corners. He would take his throne. But first he had to destroy the dragon. He would butcher him like a piece of meat; a long pig, that’s all he was: cutlets, chops, ribs and chitterlings. He would make sausages out of him, ha, because in the end he was nothing more than a side of pork … No, smaller than that. He was just a lamb. A leg of lamb. Yes. He would slaughter the lamb.

Ah! Gentle, gracious Dove, And art thou grieved in me, That sinners should restrain thy love, And say, “It is not free: It is not free for all: The most, thou passest by, And mockest with a fruitless call Whom thou hast doomed to die.” They think thee not sincere In giving each his day, “ Thou only draw’st the sinner near To cast him quite away, To aggravate his sin, His sure damnation seal: Thou show’st him heaven, and say’st, go in And thrusts him into hell.” O HORRIBLE DECREE Worthy of whence it came! Forgive their hellish blasphemy Who charge it on the Lamb: Whose pity him inclined To leave his throne above, The friend, and Saviour of mankind, The God of grace, and love. O gracious, loving Lord, I feel thy bowels yearn; For those who slight the gospel word I share in thy concern: How art thou grieved to be By ransomed worms withstood! How dost thou bleed afresh to see Them trample on thy blood! To limit thee they dare, Blaspheme thee to thy face, Deny their fellow-worms a share In thy redeeming grace: All for their own they take, Thy righteousness engross, Of none effect to most they make The merits of thy cross. Sinners, abhor the fiend: His other gospel hear— “The God of truth did not intend The thing his words declare, He offers grace to all, Which most cannot embrace, Mocked with an ineffectual call And insufficient grace. “The righteous God consigned Them over to their doom, And sent the Saviour of mankind To damn them from the womb; To damn for falling short, “Of what they could not do, For not believing the report Of that which was not true. “The God of love passed by The most of those that fell, Ordained poor reprobates to die, And forced them into hell.” “He did not do the deed” (Some have more mildly raved) “He did not damn them—but decreed They never should be saved. “He did not them bereave Of life, or stop their breath, His grace he only would not give, And starved their souls to death.” Satanic sophistry! But still, all-gracious God, They charge the sinner’s death on thee, Who bought’st him with thy blood. They think with shrieks and cries To please the Lord of hosts, And offer thee, in sacrifice Millions of slaughtered ghosts: With newborn babes they fill The dire infernal shade, “For such,” they say, “was thy great will, Before the world was made.” How long, O God, how long Shall Satan’s rage proceed! Wilt thou not soon avenge the wrong, And crush the serpent’s head? Surely thou shalt at last Bruise him beneath our feet: The devil and his doctrine cast Into the burning pit. Arise, O God, arise, Thy glorious truth maintain, Hold forth the bloody sacrifice, For every sinner slain! Defend thy mercy’s cause, Thy grace divinely free, Lift up the standard of thy cross, Draw all men unto thee. O vindicate thy grace, Which every soul may prove, Us in thy arms of love embrace, Of everlasting love. Give the pure gospel word, Thy preachers multiply, Let all confess their common Lord, And dare for him to die. My life I here present, My heart’s last drop of blood, O let it all be freely spent In proof that thou art good, Art good to all that breathe, Who all may pardon have: Thou willest not the sinner’s death, But all the world wouldst save. O take me at my word, But arm me with thy power, Then call me forth to suffer, Lord, To meet the fiery hour: In death will I proclaim That all may hear thy call, And clap my hands amidst the flame, And shout,—HE DIED FOR ALL

Earlier, when Jesus sent out the 72 disciples, he spoke of “a money bag, sack, and sandals.” Now he speaks of “a money bag, sack, and sword.” He is speaking symbolically, referring to a new time of persecution. The disciples miss the point, take him literally, and produce two swords. His response amounts to: “Enough of that.” We’re sometimes taught to be quick with the sword, and we’ve all got our own “swords” – glaring daggers at someone, making cutting remarks. Throughout this Lent, I’ll watch Jesus face some “swords:” Mockery, manhandling, torture. The early Christians applied a passage from Isaiah to him: He was led like a sheep to the slaughter and as a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he opened not his mouth. (Is 53:7) How did he do that? How could I do that? Ask him.

The carciofini were good at the moment, no doubt about it, particularly the romagnolo, a variety of artichoke exclusive to the region, so sweet and tender it could even be eaten raw. Puntarelle, a local bitter chicory, would make a heavenly salad. In the Vini e Olio he found a rare Torre Ercolana, a wine that combined Cabernet and Merlot with the local Cesanese grape. The latter had been paired with the flavors of Roman cuisine for over a thousand years: they went together like an old married couple. There was spring lamb in abundance, and he was able to track down some good abbachio, suckling lamb that had been slaughtered even before it had tasted grass. From opportunities like these, he began to fashion a menu, letting the theme develop in his mind. A Roman meal, yes, but more than that. A springtime feast, in which every morsel spoke of resurgence and renewal, old flavors restated with tenderness and delicacy, just as they had been every spring since time began. He bought a bottle of oil that came from a tiny estate he knew of, a fresh pressing whose green, youthful flavors tasted like a bowl of olives just off the tree. He hesitated before a stall full of fat white asparagus from Bassano del Grappa, on the banks of the fast-flowing river Brenta. It was outrageously expensive, but worth it for such quality, he decided, as the stallholder wrapped a dozen of the pale spears in damp paper and handed it to Bruno with a flourish, like a bouquet of the finest flowers. His theme clarified itself the more he thought about it. It was to be a celebration of youth---youth cut short, youth triumphant, youth that must be seized and celebrated.

The dairy industry has its own ways of forcing animals to do its will. Cows, goats and sheep produce milk only after giving birth to calves, kids and lambs, and only as long as the youngsters are suckling. To continue a supply of animal milk, a farmer needs to have calves, kids or lambs for suckling, but must prevent them from monopolising the milk. One common method throughout history was to simply slaughter the calves and kids shortly after birth, milk the mother for all she was worth, and then get pregnant again. This is still a very widespread technique. In many modern dairy farms a milk cow usually lives for about five years before being slaughtered. During these five years she si almost constantly pregnant, and is fertilised within 60 to 120 days after giving birth in order to preserve maximum milk production. Her calves are separated from her shortly after birth. The females are reared to become the next generation of dairy cows, whereas the males are handed over to the care of the meat industry.

Still dark. The Alpine hush is miles deep. The skylight over Holly’s bed is covered with snow, but now that the blizzard’s stopped I’m guessing the stars are out. I’d like to buy her a telescope. Could I send her one? From where? My body’s aching and floaty but my mind’s flicking through the last night and day, like a record collector flicking through a file of LPs. On the clock radio, a ghostly presenter named Antoine Tanguay is working through Nocturne Hour from three till four A.M. Like all the best DJs, Antoine Tanguay says almost nothing. I kiss Holly’s hair, but to my surprise she’s awake: “When did the wind die down?” “An hour ago. Like someone unplugged it.” “You’ve been awake a whole hour?” “My arm’s dead, but I didn’t want to disturb you.” “Idiot.” She lifts her body to tell me to slide out. I loop a long strand of her hair around my thumb and rub it on my lip. “I spoke out of turn last night. About your brother. Sorry.” “You’re forgiven.” She twangs my boxer shorts’ elastic. “Obviously. Maybe I needed to hear it.” I kiss her wound-up hair bundle, then uncoil it. “You wouldn’t have any ciggies left, perchance?” In the velvet dark, I see her smile: A blade of happiness slips between my ribs. “What?” “Use a word like ‘perchance’ in Gravesend, you’d get crucified on the Ebbsfleet roundabout for being a suspected Conservative voter. No cigarettes left, I’m ’fraid. I went out to buy some yesterday, but found a semiattractive stalker, who’d cleverly made himself homeless forty minutes before a whiteout, so I had to come back without any.” I trace her cheekbones. “Semiattractive? Cheeky moo.” She yawns an octave. “Hope we can dig a way out tomorrow.” “I hope we can’t. I like being snowed in with you.” “Yeah well, some of us have these job things. Günter’s expecting a full house. Flirty-flirty tourists want to party-party-party.” I bury my head in the crook of her bare shoulder. “No.” Her hand explores my shoulder blade. “No what?” “No, you can’t go to Le Croc tomorrow. Sorry. First, because now I’m your man, I forbid it.” Her sss-sss is a sort of laugh. “Second?” “Second, if you went, I’d have to gun down every male between twelve and ninety who dared speak to you, plus any lesbians too. That’s seventy-five percent of Le Croc’s clientele. Tomorrow’s headlines would all be BLOODBATH IN THE ALPS AND LAMB THE SLAUGHTERER, and the a vegetarian-pacifist type, I know you wouldn’t want any role in a massacre so you’d better shack up”—I kiss her nose, forehead, and temple—“with me all day.” She presses her ear to my ribs. “Have you heard your heart? It’s like Keith Moon in there. Seriously. Have I got off with a mutant?” The blanket’s slipped off her shoulder: I pull it back. We say nothing for a while. Antoine whispers in his radio studio, wherever it is, and plays John Cage’s In a Landscape. It unscrolls, meanderingly. “If time had a pause button,” I tell Holly Sykes, “I’d press it. Right”—I press a spot between her eyebrows and up a bit—“there. Now.” “But if you did that, the whole universe’d be frozen, even you, so you couldn’t press play to start time again. We’d be stuck forever.” I kiss her on the mouth and blood’s rushing everywhere. She murmurs, “You only value something if you know it’ll end.

Yet this religious outcast, this man who was thought to be in a state of perpetual uncleanliness, had gotten his hands on a sacred scroll and found a passage from the prophet Isaiah that resonated profoundly with his own experience: He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he did not open his mouth. In his humiliation he was deprived of justice. Who can speak of his descendants? For his life was taken from the earth. ACTS 8:32–33 When Philip heard the eunuch reading these words aloud, he approached the chariot and asked if the eunuch understood them. “How can I unless someone guides me?” the eunuch replied. Philip climbed into the chariot, and as it rumbled through the wilderness, told the eunuch about Jesus—about how when God became one of us, God suffered too. Overcome, the eunuch looked out at the rugged landscape that surrounded them and shouted, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” We don’t know how long that question, brimming with such childlike joy it wrenches the heart, hung vulnerable as a drop of water in the desert air. At another time in his life, Philip might have pointed to the eunuch’s ethnicity, or his anatomy, or his inability to gain access to the ceremonial baths that made a person clean. But instead, with no additional conversation between the travelers, the chariot lumbered to a halt and Philip baptized the eunuch in the first body of water the two could find. It might have been a river, or it might have been a puddle in the road. Philip got out of God’s way. He remembered that what makes the gospel offensive isn’t who it keeps out, but who it lets in.

Stockholm, May 1943 I am on a stake, thought eighteen-year-old Tatiana, waking up one cold summer morning. I cannot live like this anymore. She got up from the bed, washed, brushed her hair, collected her books and her few clothes, and then left the hotel room as clean as if she had not been in it for over two months. The white curtains blowing a breeze into the room were unrelenting. Inside herself was unrelenting. Over the desk there was an oval mirror. Before Tatiana tied up her hair she stared at her face. What stared back at her was a face she no longer recognized. Gone was the round baby shape; a gaunt oval remained over her drawn cheekbones and her high forehead and her squared jaw and her clenched lips. If she had dimples still, they did not show; it had been a long time since her mouth bared teeth or dimples. The scar on her cheek from the piece of the broken windshield had healed and was fading into a thin pink line. The freckles were fading too, but it was the eyes Tatiana recognized least of all. Her once twinkling green eyes set deep into the pale features looked as if they were the only ghastly crystal barriers between strangers and her soul. She couldn’t lift them to anyone. She could not lift them to herself. One look into the green sea, and it was clear what raged on behind the frail façade. Tatiana brushed her shoulder blade-length platinum hair. She didn’t hate her hair anymore. How could she, for Alexander had loved it so much. She would not think of it. She wanted to cut it all off, shear herself like a lamb before the slaughter, she wanted to cut her hair and take the whites out of her eyes and the teeth out of her mouth and tear the arteries out of her throat.

So that's the way of it, is it." Mr. Taylor rejoined, not to be deterred. " You intend to tell us nothing?" "The ways of Justice, like the secrets of the marriage bed, are best enshrouded in silence," Neddie intoned. Mr. Taylor merely snorted at this, while Lizzy laid a hand caressingly on my brother's shoulder. "Poor lamb," she crooned, "you shall be led to the slaughter. I give you a quarter-hour, my dear, at the hands of your dearest --- and then we shall see how enshrouded your tongue may be. Come along, Jane.

Jesus had the guilty in mind when He hung high and stretched out wide.... He, bare-bodied and face set on joy, became as a slaughtered lamb underneath the wrath of God... Didn't He know that wrath was mine? It even had my name on it. But He knew... Without asking my permission, a good God had come to my rescue.

It was ironic really that she was willingly, like a lamb to slaughter, going to her Commencement, readily taking the Crown that would prove to be her curse.

Controversy remains about what kind of ceremony is carried out in Ge 15:9–21. What/whom do the pieces represent (possibilities: sacrifice for oath, God if he reneges, nations already as good as dead, Israelites in slavery)? Whom do the birds of prey represent (nations seeking to seize available land, e.g., Ge 14, or to plunder Israel)? Whom do the implements represent (God and/or Abram)? These issues cannot currently be resolved, but a few observations can help identify some of the possible connections with the ancient world. Before we look at the options, a word is in order about what this is not. 1. It is not a sacrifice. There is no altar, no offering of the animals to deity and no ritual with the carcasses, the meat or the blood. 2. It is not divination. The entrails are not examined and no meal is offered to deity. 3. It is not an incantation. No words are spoken to accompany the ritual and no efficacy is sought—Abram is asleep. The remaining options are based on where animals are ritually slaughtered in the ancient world when it is not for the purposes of sacrifice, divination or incantation. Option 1: A covenant ceremony or, more specifically, a royal land grant ceremony. In this case the animals typically are understood as substituting for the participants or proclaiming a self-curse if the stipulations are violated. Examples of the slaughter of animals in such ceremonies but not for sacrificial purposes are numerous. In tablets from Alalakh, the throat of a lamb is slit in connection to a deed executed between Abba-El and Yarimlim. In a Mari text, the head of a donkey is cut off when sealing a formal agreement. In an Aramaic treaty of Sefire, a calf is cut in two with the explicit statement that such will be the fate of the one who breaks the treaty. In Neo-Assyrian literature, the head of a spring lamb is cut off in a treaty between Ashurnirari V and Mati’ilu, not for sacrifice but explicitly as an example of punishment. The strength of these examples lies in the contextual connection to covenant. The weakness is that only one animal is killed in these examples, and there is no passing through the pieces and no torch and firepot. Furthermore, there are significant limitations regarding the efficacy of a divine self-curse. Option 2: Purification. The “torch” (Ge 15:17) is a portable, handheld object for bringing light. The “smoking firepot” (15:17) can refer to a number of different vessels used to heat things (e.g., an oven for food, a kiln for pottery). Here the two items are generally assumed to be associated with God, but need not be symbolic representations of him. These implements are occasionally used symbolically to represent deities in ancient Near Eastern literature, but usually sun-gods (e.g., Shamash) or fire-gods (e.g., Girru/Gibil). Gibil and Kusu are often invoked together as divine torch and censer in a wide range of cultic ceremonies for purification. Abram would have probably been familiar with the role of Gibil and Kusu in purification rituals, so that function would be plausibly communicated to him by the presence of these implements. Yet in a purification role, neither the torch nor the censer ever pass between the pieces of cut-up animals in the literature available to us. Further weakness is in the fact that Yahweh doesn’t need purification and Abram is a spectator, not a participant, so neither does he. In the Mesopotamian Hymn to Gibil (the torch), the god purifies the objects used in the ritual, but the only objects in the ritual in Ge 15 are the dead animals, and it is difficult to understand why they would need to be purified.

Daba was furious, her pride wounded. She repeated all the nicknames Binetou had given her father: old man, pot-belly, sugar-daddy! . . . the person who gave her life had been daily ridiculed and he accepted it. An overwhelming anger raged inside Daba. She knew that her best friend was sincere in what she said. But what can a child do, faced with a furious mother shouting about her hunger and her thirst to live? Binetou, like many others, was a lamb slaughtered on the altar of affluence.

Now if we turn to the Book of Revelation—which we saw as a cause of offense in its apparent celebration of a God of violence—we have to say in all honesty that it is in fact a nonviolent New Testament writing, and profoundly so. ‘The Lamb’ is the general symbolic name given to Jesus in the book, mentioned 29 times, an image of nonviolence and the book’s undisputed hero. The essence of the Lamb is not to use violence. When we first hear of it is ‘standing as if it had been slaughtered’ (5:6): it does not fight, it is slaughtered, and it continues exactly ‘as if it were something slaughtered (i.e. it does not lose this identity). Furthermore its followers do not fight, they also are killed. We learn that the Lamb holds the key to human history, opening its seals to reveal its purpose and meaning, including its intense inner violence. The Lamb is able to do this because it represents a completely different human / divine way of responding, other than that of violence. At the same time, precisely because of this revelation, all hell (literally) breaks out around the Lamb. The old world system—the Beast—does not remain indifferent to the introduction of a new way and the absolute challenge it makes, but reacts with continually redoubled violence. At the end of the book there is a final battle when the Beast and the kings of the earth with their armies are all slain by a figure called the Word of God, by the sword which comes from his mouth. But directly afterwards the new earth and the city of the Lamb welcome and heal these very kings and nations which have just been slain! The only figures not to be restored are the Beast and its prophet which represent the system of violence, the imperial order with its ideological apparatus of cult and worship. No doubt there is a powerful tonality of anger running through the book, against the oppression and murder that the Christian communities were then experiencing at the hands of the Roman Empire. And there is pretty clearly a sense of emotional release offered by the images of destruction and vengeance unleashed against the forces of oppression. But the final structure of the book is redemptive and life-giving, and that has to be admitted in any honest assessment. The duality then is not between a vengeful God and a gentle Jesus, or an initially gentle Jesus and then a violent one, but between an actual world and culture of violence and a core message of forgiveness and nonviolence. The early Christians were sorely oppressed by the former and seeking desperately to hang on to the latter. If they use language and symbolism derived from the former to restore hope in the substance of the latter then the tension is literary and poetic, rather than two moods or identities of God. The book of Revelation was intended to have a cathartic effect on emotion, in order that the Christians who read or heard it could arrive, in their minds and hearts, at the transformed perspective where they welcomed and blessed their enemies. In other words it was and is intended to be therapeutic.3 In contrast the split between Jesus and a God of punishment—which came to full growth in the Middle Ages—is ontological, and can only lead to a fundamental division in the Christian soul, with eternal love on the one hand, and eternal violence on the other. In other words, a spiritual schizophrenia. This

Over and over, early Christian writings tell us of how Christians were branded atheists by the imperial courts and executed for this capital crime. They had lost all faith in the empire and had become faithful to God alone as the one who could preserve peace and prosperity. They claimed Jesus as their only emperor (Acts 17:7), they preached the kingdom of their God, and they pledged allegiance to the slaughtered Lamb. Today, there are many things I love about “America the Beautiful,” and yet the book of Revelation sounds a clear warning that any glory we give to Babylon is glory that belongs only to God. As my friend Tony Campolo says, “We may live in the best Babylon in the world, but it is still Babylon, and we are called to ‘come out of her.’” John warns the church in Asia Minor to be “faithful unto death” (Rev. 2:10). He describes a marriage between God and God’s people. They are to be loyal to their lover, Yahweh, their faith remaining in God alone, adorned as a bride, the New Jerusalem. Describing Rome as the whoring seductress Babylon the Great, John warns the Christians that the empire will entice them with a counterfeit splendor, and he warns against flirting with her pleasures and treasures, which will soon come to ruin. They are not to be shocked and awed by Babylon’s power nor dazzled by her jewels. Rather than drinking humanity’s blood from her golden cup of suffering (17:6), they are to choose the eucharistic cup filled with the blood of the new covenant. We are faithful not to the triumphant golden eagle (ironically, also an imperial symbol of power in Rome) but to the slaughtered Lamb.

The earth, so long a slaughter field, shall yet an Eden bloom, the tiger to the lamb shall yield, and war descend the tomb.

It is a sad reality that so many, even those of the faith, seem to effectively kneel before Ares. This idolatry of violence and war is in such contrast to worshiping at the feet of the Prince of Peace. Sometimes it feels as if the entire world is marching toward destruction and chaos. Worst of all is that we know the mistakes made in our histories, but we seem to learn nothing from history (other than that we learn nothing). We do it all again and again. Sin after sin. When posterity comes to judge us will they look upon the arms trade unchecked, the governments unhindered in iniquity and the vast lands of earth bursting into flame? Or will they look and see a people who voiced against the arms trade, the war mongers and the hell fire worshippers? Either way, it is hard to not get depressed. But, take heart peaceful brothers and sisters. Though this dark night of evil brings such bitter sorrow, joy comes in the morning. That morning will come and swords will be of no use, for the learning of war will be no more. Will it happen before or after the King arrives? God knows, but heed the encouragement given by Adin Ballou: "The earth, so long a slaughter field, Shall yet an Eden bloom. The tiger to the lamb shall yield, And war descend the tomb." Amen Choose this day who you will serve! O Lord, let it be Christós!

By the time of the Mosaic covenant, the peace offering (Lev 17:11ff.) was the divinely prescribed means of maintaining a harmonious relationship between God and his covenant people. The sin offering (Lev 4) dealt with sin as a barrier between the worshipers and God. This sin offering was a slaughtered bull, lamb, or goat with which the worshiper had identified himself by laying his hands on its head. When the blood of the victim, signifying its life (Lev 17:11), was daubed on the horns of the altar, symbolizing the presence of God, God and the worshipers were united in a renewed relationship.

Farther on she came upon a feast of corpses. Savagely slaughtered, the feasters lay strewn across overturned chairs and hacked trestle tables, asprawl in pools of congealing blood. Some had lost limbs, even heads. Severed hands clutched bloody cups, wooden spoons, roast fowl, heels of bread. In a throne above them sat a dead man with the head of a wolf. He wore an iron crown and held a leg of lamb in one hand as a king might

If Cosgrove means to play games, then so do I. I will marry him because I must, but I shall not be a lamb- or a cow- led to the slaughter. If he intends to destroy my spirit, he will find it a difficult task. I am not some fly whose wings he can pull off and then step on. I'm... I'm a bee, and I shall sting him back.

The definition for the “Poop Deck” as found in nautical books would lead you to believe that the name was derived from the French word for the stern of the ship, la poupe which in turn was derived from the Latin puppis. On sailing ships this deck was higher than the main deck, making it ideal to navigate from. It also was where the binnacle and ship’s wheel were located for the helmsman. The deck of the poop deck formed the roof or overhead of the Captain’s cabin making it convenient for the Captain to reach. His after cabin was frequently irreverently referred to as the “poop cabin!” As wooden ships with iron men were replace with wooden men on iron ships, the navigational functions, with the exception of setting the sails, were moved to the bridge. According to my father who was a ship’s cook in the early 1920’s, the term poop deck remained, but took on a totally different meaning. During the turn of the last century, with coal fired reciprocating steam engines replacing wind and sails, this rear deck was where animals were kept to be butchered for food. Salted meat packed in barrels and the lack of fresh vegetables was the frequent cause of constipation and even worse scurvy. Many ships of that era, and before, didn’t yet have refrigeration and this was the way they continued to have fresh meat. A cabin boy tended to the chickens, pigs, lambs and goats and it was up to the butcher or cooks to slaughter and quarter them. Of course the deck nearest the stern was ideal for this, leaving the ensuing smell behind in the wake of the ship. Seldom is the term “Poop Deck” used now since with the advent of cruise ships nautical terms are fading. Bunks have become beds, cabins became staterooms and the head is now the restroom. Oh, what has become of the days of yore?

If he wanted to break her curse, he need only find a human girl willing to marry him. But not any girl—a human with ice in her heart, with hatred for our kind. A human girl willing to kill a faerie.” The ground rocked beneath me, and I was grateful for the wall I leaned against. “Worse, the faerie she killed had to be one of his men, sent across the wall by him like lambs to slaughter. The girl could only be brought here to be courted if she killed one of his men in an unprovoked attack—killed him for hatred alone, just as Jurian had done to Clythia … So he could understand her sister’s pain.

She was plainly not prone to sentimental outbursts; one impeccable tear tracked a charming trail down her cheek, and she glanced away. Flustered, she battled to stabilize her breathing and regain control, and he heaved a resigned sigh. The ice around his heart began to melt. Incapable of sustaining his upset, he swiped his hand across her silky skin, capturing the warm moisture on his thumb, then he stuck it in his mouth and sucked at the salty drop. She was out of her league in this residence and with these people; a lamb led to the slaughter.

For every Catholic, it is clear that there is an inseparable union between God, Jesus Christ, and the Catholic Church. In fact, the Father sent His Son, who took a human nature for the work of the Redemption, and this Son, this incarnate God, founds a visible Church, of which He Himself is the Head. He creates one Church and since our Lord is absolute and unique, since He is really God, the only true God, there is also only one Church, which is absolute and unique, as Her Founder and Master is. "One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all," says St. Paul in his Epistle to the Ephesians (4:5). This Church is the sign among the nations; she is the temple of the living God; she is the spouse of the slaughtered Lamb, the new Jerusalem which has descended to this earth. The Church is truly the Emmanuel, that is to say, God among us, God with us, the divine nature amidst the human nature. She is really the Mystical Body of our Lord and so, she is a divine institution, since our Lord is God and so all He says and does is divine and all that He has founded is established as a divine foundation.

Alternatively, hunters may have caught and ‘adopted’ a lamb, fattening it during the months of plenty and slaughtering it in the leaner season. At some stage they began keeping a greater number of such lambs. Some of these reached puberty and began to procreate. The most aggressive and unruly lambs were first to the slaughter. The most submissive, most appealing lambs were allowed to live longer and procreate. The result was a herd of domesticated and submissive sheep. Such domesticated animals – sheep, chickens, donkeys and others – supplied food (meat, milk, eggs), raw materials (skins, wool), and muscle power. Transportation, ploughing, grinding and other tasks, hitherto performed by human sinew, were increasingly carried out by animals. In most farming societies people focused on plant cultivation; raising animals was a secondary activity. But a new kind of society also appeared in some places, based primarily on the exploitation of animals: tribes of pastoralist herders.

She said he had seven times seven years before she claimed him, before he had to join her Under the Mountain. If he wanted to break her curse, he need only find a human girl willing to marry him. But not any girl- a human with ice in her heart, with hatred for our kind. A human girl willing to kill a faerie.' The ground rocked beneath me, and I was grateful for the wall I leaned against. 'Worse, the faerie she killed had to be one of his men, sent across the wall by him like lambs to slaughter. The girl could only be brought here to be courted if she killed one of his men in an unprovoked attack- killed him for hatred alone, just as Jurian had done to Clythia... So he could understand her sister's pain.' ... 'It was all a cruel joke, a clever punishment, to Amarantha. You humans loathe and fear faeries so much it would be impossible- impossible for the same girl who slaughtered a faerie in cold blood to them fall in love with one. But the spell on Tamlin could only be broken if she did just that before the forty-nine years were over- if that girl said to his face that she loved him, and meant it with her entire heart. Amarantha knows humans are preoccupied with beauty, and thus bound the masks to all of our faces, to his face, so it would be more difficult to find a girl willing to look beyond the mask, beyond his faerie nature, and to the soul beneath. Then she bound us so we couldn't say a word about the curse. Not a single word. We could hardly tell you a thing about our world, about our fate. He couldn't tell you- none of us properly could. The lies about the blight- that was the best he could do, the best we could all do. That I can tell you now... it means the game is over, to her.

All of us are like sheep who have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and God has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was cruelly abused, yet he didn’t open his mouth; as a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as a sheep that before its shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who among them considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living for the sins of others to whom the stroke was due? They made his grave with the wicked, and with a rich man in his death; although he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased God to bruise him; he put him to grief: when he made his soul an offering for sin… He will see the travail of his soul, and be satisfied: by himself shall my righteous servant justify many; and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will give him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out his soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors: yet he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

Lamb Christology is inseparable from ethics. Paradoxically, the slaughtered Lamb reveals God and also reveals what it means to be faithful to God. It reveals how God saves humanity and how humanity in turn can serve God.

Seriously, what’s your problem with faith? It’s not like it’s hurting anyone.”  “Correction, Snow. It hurts everyone. If it was a benevolent thing someone did and kept to themselves, I wouldn’t have a problem. But it’s not. Organized religion is used to coerce, pervert and maintain a vacuum for the sheep. Bow your head and keep praying while those with power hurt you. I’m not willing to be a lamb for them to slaughter.

Mala’s bloodline shall bleed again to forge the Lock anew. And you will lead them, a lamb to slaughter, to pay the price of this choice you made to waste its power here, for this petty battle. You will show this future scion how to forge a new Lock with Mala’s gifts, how to then use it to wield the keys and send us home. Our original bargain still holds: we will take the Dark King with us. Tear him apart in our own world, where he will be but dust and memory. When we are gone—you will show this scion how to seal the gate behind us, the Lock holding it intact eternally. By yielding every last drop of their life force. As your father was prepared to do when the time was right.

Just remember that. You’re raising a lamb for the slaughter. However sweet that lamb might be.

MESSIAH’S APPEARANCE. [Isa. 53:1–3] Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. HIS SUFFERING FOR OUR SINS. [Isa. 53:4–6] Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. HUMILITY OF MESSIAH’S DEATH. [Isa. 53:7–9] He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By oppression6 and judgment he was taken away. Yet who of his generation protested? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was punished.7 He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.

Like a lamb to the slaughter”: Something that you say about someone who goes somewhere calmly, not knowing that something unpleasant is going to happen to them.