son in sacrifice, or to the Mexican one, who was contented with the blood of a slave.* * It is doubtful whether any Christian has ever paid real attention to the doctrines which are familiar to his ear, or to the hymns which an most frequently on his tongue. In the usual fashion which is prevalent amongst ministers and hearers, everything which is told by missionaries of heathen deities is taken as true. Thus it has become the general belief that the Mexican theology, which required an annual sacrifice of human beings, whose hearts were cut out, and offered warm, palpitating and full of blood, to a God who was supposed to be present in a sacred stone statue, was beyond measure atrocious. But in what consists the horror, unless in the fact that the sacrifice was seen by the worshippers? In Christendom people are never called upon to see a man killed by nailing him to a cross. If they were condemned to this penance, very little would any of them talk of blood. As it is, the minds of the majority are lulled to sleep by the substitution of words for facts, and texts of Scripture for ideas; and those who are unable to look upon a cut finger without fainting, and would not for worlds go to see a man decapitated, talk in the serenest manner on most sanguinary topics. A reference to a few hymns which are general favourites will illustrate what I mean. In "Rock of Ages," for example, we have the lines-- "Let the water and the blood From thy riven side that flowed, Cleanse from sin and make me pure." Another equally popular hymn begins "From Calv'ry's cross a fountain flows Of water and of blood, More healing than Bethesda's pool, Redeeming Lord, thy precious blood Shall never lose its power..." and again-- "There is a fountain filled with blood, Drawn from Immanuels veins, And sinners plunged beneath that flood Lose all their guilty stains."