he might as an hireling receive his wages for it, without being exposed to a similar prosecution of that of Moses; and provided he should gather sticks on our Sunday, his wages would atone for his crime instead of his life, since modern legislators have abated the rigor of the law for which he died. The barbarous zeal of the prophet Samuel in hewing Agag to pieces after he was made prisoner by Saul, king of Israel, could not proceed from a good spirit, nor would such cruelty be permitted towards a prisoner in any civilized nation at this day. "And Samuel hewed Agag to pieces before the Lord in Gilgal." The unmanly deed seems to be mentioned with a phiz of religion, viz: that it was done before the Lord; but that cannot alter the nature of the act itself, for every act of mankind, whether good or evil, is done before the Lord, as much as Samuel's hewing Agag to pieces. The orders which Samuel gave unto Saul, (as he says by the word of the Lord) to cut off the posterity of the Amalekites, and to destroy them utterly, together with the cause of God's displeasure with them, are unworthy of God as may be seen at large in the 15th chapter of the Book of Samuel, "Spare them not, but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." The ostensible reason for all this, was, because the ancestors of the Amalekites, as long before the days of Samuel as when the children of Israel came out of Egypt, which was near five hundred years, had ambushed and fought against Israel, in their passage from thence to the land which they afterwards inhabited. Although it appears from the history of Moses and Joshua, that Israel was going to disposess them of their country, which is thought to be a sufficient cause of war in these days. It is true they insinuate that the Lord had given the land to the children of Israel, yet it appears that they had to fight for it and get it by the hardest, notwithstanding, as is the case with nations in these days, and ever has been since the knowledge of history.