times, some criminals have been roasted; some impaled; some sawn asunder; and some flayed alive. Some have been rolled in casks stuck with nails pointing inward; some embowelled and some torn in pieces with red hot pincers of iron.

6. Some heathen nations are distinguished for the cruelties which they practise upon the sick and the dying." Every Hindoo, in the hour of death, is hurried to the side of the Ganges, or some other sacred river, if near enough to one of these rivers, where he is laid in his last agonies, exposed to the burning sun by day, and to the dews and cold of the night. The water of the river is poured plentifully down him, if he can swallow it, and his breast, forehead, and arms are besmeared with the mud. before the soul quits the body, he is immersed to the middle, in the stream; while his relations stand round him, tormenting him in these his last moments with superstitious rites and increasing a hundred fold the pains of dying. Very often, where recovery might be reasonably hoped for, these barbarous rites bring on premature death.".

Just

7. Anthropophagia, or the eating of human flesh, is another species of barbarity common in many heathen countries.-It has been practised in numerous instances by the savages of this country. In South America too," there are whole nations of Cannibals, who slaughter and devour their captives. Sometimes they slay their own wives, and invite their neighbours to the repast."-"The custom of eating their prisoners is universal among the New-Zealanfers." Mr Marsden states, that after an extensive acquaintance in the island, he has met with no damily, but some branches of it have been killed in battle, and eaten by their enemies."-The native in

habitants of Sumatra are in the habit of slaughtering and devouring not only their captives and criminals, but even their parents. "When a man becomes aged and infirm, he invites his children and friends to come and eat him."-" In the interior of Africa, and especially among the Gagers, the chieftains and principal warriors feed daily upon the bodies of their fellow men. Hundreds of children are annually slain," to satisfy their tiger-like appetite for human flesh." Once more,

8. The dark places of the earth are distinguished for the cruelties which attend their wars.-The visage of war is a horrid one presented in any place. The very name imports little besides carnage and cruelty. But in the dark and uncivilized portions of the earth, its features are peculiarly forbidding and dreadful. What must be the horrors of war, where private property is utterly disregarded, and where every woman and child is liable to be massacred, or carried into a long and doleful captivity? What must be its horrors, where every captive is instantly sold for a slave, or butchered for the table, or doomed to drag out life in hopeles confinement and misery? What must be its horrors, where death, in every decent form, is denied to the imploring prisoner, and the principal study is to enhance his expiring agonies, by the invention and application of the most excruciating torments ?

If this subject needs any practical illustration, we may have it in those scenes of Indian warfare, which have often been witnessed upon our own shore. The father butchered in presence of his family; the infant's brains dashed out before its mother's eyes; peaceful villages suddenly wrapped in flames; and all the horrors of savage captivity, unitedly set

forth the sufferings and cruelties, which are the invariable attendants of uncivilized war. Or if we need a still more recent and dreadful illustration ; we may find it in those acts of Turkish barbarity, which have been perpetrated during the late and present struggles in Greece. The cruel sufferings and death of the venerable Patriarch of the Greek Church; the atrocities which immediately followed in and about Constantinople; the sack of Scio; the massacre at Cyprus ;-these events, and many others of a similar character, will descend on the page of history down the annals of time, and remain an eternal monument of the cruelty, the sacrilege, and the shame, of those who have promoted them.

This branch of the subject need not, it is thought, be pursued farther. Enough, and more than enough, has been said, to justify the declaration of the Psalm"The dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty.”

ist;

REFLECTIONS.

1. If what has been said is true, then the heathen in their present condition cannot be saved.It is the opinion of some, that this benighted class of beings are in a safe state. "God does not require them to improve talents which he has never bestowed, and will not condemn them for their ignorance of the true religion."-I will not here discuss the question, whether any can "believe in him of whom they have not heard," or be saved, without the knowledge of a Saviour. Should it be admitted that they might; there is still an insuperable bar to the salvation of the heathen: They manifestly have not the spirit or the character of heaven. Heaven is a holy place;