wise. By an immediate compliance with the offers of mercy, let us avert the impending wrath of heaven, and secure for ourselves a portion which will nevfail. Amen.

er

DISCOURSE XI.

THE CRUELTIES OF THE HEATHEN.

Psalm lxxiv. 20.

"The dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty.

BY"the dark places of the earth," the Psalmist intends those regions which are covered with moral and spiritual darkness. He refers to those lands which are more or less destitute of the light of truth and revealed religion. There were many such dark places in the days of the Psalmist, and there have been many such in all periods since. But though the inhabitants of these benighted regions know not God, he knows them. He is witness of all the cruelties and abominations they practise; and he has been pleased in the text to furnish information, relative to this affecting subject. "The dark places of the earth," says he, "are full of the habitations of cruelty," Their wretched inhabitants have so stifled and blunted the common feelings of nature, that they can perpetrate the greatest cruelties, without com-punction or remorse. In attending to this subject, I propose,

I. To particularize some dark divisions of the earth. And,

II. To mention several species of cruelty which are practised in them.

Under the first of these divisions, I may direct your attention, in the first place, to those portions of

the globe, which are covered with the darkness and delusions of Popery.-The popish religion retains indeed the name of Christian; but it retains little else. There is, as it seems to me, little of the spirit or form of Christianity about it. The Scriptures are locked up from the common people; prayers are offered in an unknown tongue; and the instruction which is given is often no better, if it be not worse, than none. The cardinal duties enjoined are an obsequious subjection to the Pope and his minions, with a scrupulous observance of needless useless rites; while the ground of hope proposed is, not directly the mediation of Christ, but the merits of some renowned saint, or the intercession of the virgin Mary. To this species of delusion, multitudes of the human family are still in bondage. In Europe, the Pope wields an uncontrolled sceptre over Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Naples, Sicily, and a large part of Germany. He also claims, as his spiritual dominion, the immense regions of South America, with the exception of such parts as belong to the natives; the Southern provinces of North America; and a considerable portion of the Canadas. And besides all these, he has numerous adherents, and possesses a mighty influence, among the unnumbered millions of Asia.Large tracts of the habitable globe are therefore covered with the darkness of Popery-a darkness nearly as gross, and vastly more inexcusable, than that which broods over the regions of Paganism.

Among the dark portions of the earth, we may notice, in the next place, those which are subject to

*This is a description of Popery, not as it appears in particu. lar individuals of distinguished excellence, who retain a connection with the Roman Catholic Church, but as it is exhibited in the Canons of that Church, and is reduced to practice in the "Most Catholic" countries.

the Mahometan imposture.-The Koran, which contains the pretended revelations of Mahomet, and is the Bible and rule of all his followers, may be described as a heterogeneous mixture of Judaism, Paganism, and Christianity. It is an artfully written performance; and the religion it inculcates was propagated with the sword. Mahomet was the greatest warrior of his age; and the nations he conquered had no alternative, but to receive him as their prophet, or perish by his arms. The influence of such an argument was irresistible; the religion he enforced was embraced by multitudes; and for many centuries has spread itself over some of the fairest portions of the globe. It reigns at present, by its dark and desolating influence, over Turkey, Palestine, Persia, Egypt, Arabia, and all the Northern States of Africa. The classick ground, where Demosthenes thundered and Plato taught, and the Holy land where prophets preached and the Saviour bled, have long been numbered alike among "the dark places of the earth."

At the

Again; those parts of the globe are emphatically dark, which are under the influence of Paganism or idolatry.-Soon after the fall, mankind began to discover an unaccountable predilection for idolatry. There can be little doubt that there were idols before the flood. At any rate, we have certain knowledge of them among the early posterity of Noah. confusion of tongues, idolatry was dispersed over all the earth. It was a principal object of the call of Abraham, and the institutions in Israel, to preserve one family among the nations free from the general contagion of idolatry. The Egyptians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, and indeed, with the exception of Israel, all the enligtened and

powerful nations of antiquity, were idolaters.

And though the propagation of Christianity gave a check to this vile superstition; still, vast multitudes ever. have been, and are now, the worshippers of idols. Asia with its hundreds of millions, the interior of Africa, the unexplored wilds of North and South America, and most of the islands of the sea, are in a sense filled with the objects and the monuments of a stupid and debasing idol worship.-How true then it is, my brethren, that darkness still covers the earth, and gross darkness the people? In what deep and widely extended delusions the benighted children of men are involved? And how much there remains to be accomplished, before the Sun of righteousness will have illumined every land, and the knowledge of the Lord filled all the earth, as the waters do the seas ?

But these "dark places of the earth," says the volume of inspiration, "are full of the habitations of cruelty." This leads me to mention,

II. Several species of cruelty which are practised in them. On this part of the subject it would be easy to write volumes. My limits oblige me to be very general and brief.

1. Murder is a species of cruelty which to a great extent abounds in the dark places of the earth. There are several descriptions of murder, which, in these regions of crime, are customarily perpetrated and even publicly licensed.

One of these is the murder of infants.-The an-cient Arabs considered female infants a burthen, and often "buried them alive as soon as they were born."

The lower classes among the Chinese frequently "drown their daughters in a vessel of water, at the moment of their birth."-"Hundreds of helpless