tion of them were, more than probably, intended for sacrifice upon heathen altars. Where, then, was the cruelty in commanding them to be slain by the armies of Israel, instead of permitting them to fall by the hands of Pagan priests? Who were likely to be most considerate towards those unoffending beasts, the soldiers selected from among God's people, or the hierophants of an idolatrous temple, who were notoriously profligate and profane? Was it unmerciful to avert the sacrifice of those dumb victims, thus preventing the profanation of God's holy worship? Was it unmerciful to save such domestic animals as fell in the general destruction, from those heavy burthens daily laid upon them? It is obvious at a glance, that such an objection can have no force.

The very circumstance, moreover, that the cattle, in these devoted cities, were set apart for idolatrous sacrifice, and some of them, probably, for idolatrous worship, affords a sufficiently triumphant reply to the objector. Having become contaminated in the estimation of the Israelites, they were not permitted to be used either for food or for the purposes of husbandry. They were as

66

an unclean thing," and supposed, by the most strict observers of the law, to communicate pollution to any one who touched them. It was, consequently, held a religious obligation to destroy them, and such destruction must have no doubt followed, without any special command from God

himself. He, therefore, in this particular, only commanded what the religious impressions of His people rendered fit to be done. To have saved any of the cattle alive, would, according to those ecclesiastical laws by which the Israelites were governed, have been sinful. In order, therefore, to remind them of their religious obligations, the command of slaughtering the cattle, together with all the beasts of burthen, was added to that of destroying the inhabitants of the idolatrous towns; so that nothing tainted with the abomination of idolatry, might remain to tempt the chosen race from their allegiance to the true God. Where, I would ask you, was the cruelty of such a command? Did the sheep and oxen, camels and asses, suffer more from being all slaughtered in one day, than they could from being sacrificed in ten or more? But it is sufficient to have answered so weak a cavil.

Put, then, all the circumstances together, and to what do they amount? To this: that the Deity has, at sundry times and in divers places, sanctioned the destruction of some hundreds, perhaps thousands, of very wicked heathens, together with their guiltless children, their innocent flocks and herds. What of all this? Does it really subject the Deity to the imputation of being unmerciful? "I trow not." Do we not observe similar visitations even now? Look at St. Domingo and Hamburg within the present year. Yet who dares question God's mercy? Have

we not been accustomed far within the last half century to witness, (at least, there are many now living who have witnessed,) wholesale massacres in war, permitted by the divine Disposer of events, though not commanded? What shall we say of earthquakes, in which thousands have been buried beneath the ruins of their humble or stately homes, without an interval of warning sufficient to breathe a prayer to Him, who wields alike the elements of destruction and the ensign of mercy, which he unfurls at every point of the universe? What shall we say of hurricanes which have swept along the fair and smiling earth, including the husbandman and his labours in one indiscriminate ruin? What shall we say of epidemics, which have, within the last ten years, spread the pall of sorrow over more than half the world, sundered the dearest ties which unite us upon earth, and extorted the cry of mourning from almost every family in many lands; when it might be all but said, in numerous cities of appalled and distracted Europe, as on that awful night when the Destroying Angel unfurled his funereal wings over the devoted capital of Egypt, "there was not a house where there was not one dead?"

And

The same arm which visited the Pagan cities, visits the home of the Christian worshipper with "lamentation, and mourning, and woe." yet what true Christian presumes to arraign the divine benevolence? All physical evils appear to

No!

press grievously upon us, but will any one therefore seriously affirm that it is unjust we should suffer them! Does the caviller think God unjust, when that God visits him with blessings?-him, from whom He has received nothing but provocation; him, by whom He has been disobeyed without remorse and without shame; him, by whom His attributes have been questioned, His mercy doubted, and His justice denied? In his view of the matter, there is no injustice here. Nor, indeed, is there. And yet he must be conscious, if he reflect at all, that he can have deserved no blessings at the hand of an Omnipotent Being, so audaciously misused, so insolently doubted, so presumptuously defied. He complacently gives God credit for being just to him; but it is with that sort of self-satisfaction, which seems to imply that the Allwise Disposer of events could not act otherwise. When he suffers, however, the tone is changed. Then he is an aggrieved man. Why is he so sorely smitten? He has done nothing, he argues, to merit such severity of chastisement. "His eyes weep sore and run down with tears;" and he exclaims with querulous lamentation, impeaching God's mercy, "He hath hedged me about that I cannot get out: He hath made my chain heavy also, when I cry and shout, He shutteth out my prayer."

Such are the complainings of a man who has no consolation in Christ, no fellowship with the Holy Ghost, no reliance upon the Almighty,

everlasting God. Will any one, who looks down the far vista of time, say that the Deity has been anywhere partial in His judgments? For this has been frequently urged against Him. If He overthrew Pharoah and his host in the Red Sea, did He not likewise overthrow Dathan and Abiram, and thousands of His chosen people, in the wilderness? If he "slew mighty kings" of the heathens, did He not likewise slay the most eminent of the Israelites? Did not Nadab and Abihu "die before the Lord, when they offered strange fire before the Lord in the wilderness of Sinai ?" If He brought plagues upon the idolater, did He not visit the prophetess Miriam with leprosy? Did He not lay the hand of death upon Aaron in the journey to Canaan? And, did He not call Moses to Himself, even in sight of the promised land? If He gave to the seed of Abraham the country of the heathen for a possession, did He not, as a punishment for the increasing enormities of that favoured generation, suffer the heathen, in their turn, to bear them away captive? Did He not punish them with terrible severity in their progress from the Red Sea to the banks of the Jordan, by drought, by hunger, by thirst, by fiery serpents, by pestilence and other calamities? Did He chastise the Gentile nations more severely? Where then was His partiality? That which never existed, never can be discovered. Woe, therefore, to the doubter who presumes to couple God's name with an infirmity so degrading to Him!