them to the fiery fagot; lacerated their bodies; cut their tongues from their mouths; tore their flesh from their bones with iron hooks, tongs, and pincers; cut off their lips, and tore out their tongues, so that their piercing cries and heart-rending agonies could convey no intelligible sound; tore their nails from their fingers, and thrust needles into the bleeding wounds; melted red-hot metal, and poured it down their throats; plucked out their eyes, and threw them to beasts; and, in some cases, their bodies were "stretched upon the rack, and flayed alive, or torn limb from limb". But I forbear: the picture is too shocking. Oh that the waves of oblivion could roll over and cover such deeds of cruelty for ever! I rejoice that the age for such atrocities is passed, and, I trust, can never return. I hope the churches will never again hold the reins of government, and shape all the laws of the country. The reason we do not witness such horrible scenes now is, that many church-members have outgrown their Bible; and, if there are any who have not, they are restrained by laws enacted by liberal minds of too much good feeling and good sense to permit the churches to thus cruelly persecute each other, or those who conscientiously differ from them. I have stated that the shocking cruelties and barbarities practiced by Christians upon each other in past ages, find a warrant in the Bible. The act of David, "the man after God's own heart," in placing the children of Ammon under saws and harrows of iron, is scarcely equaled in atrocity by any act recorded in the history of the Fiji cannibals. It is revolting to every impulse of benevolence, every feeling of humanity, and all ideas of mercy or justice. And his wicked prayer, contained in the one hundred and ninth Psalm, breathes forth the same spirit. It is a series of fiendish imprecations poured out upon the heads of those who differed from his creed, and worshiped a different God. We will quote some of his language: "Set thou a wicked man over him. Let there be none to extend mercy unto him; let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow; let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg; let his posterity be cut off, and their name blotted out; let the extortioner get all that he hath; let his prayer become sin; let the stranger spoil his land; let not the sin of his mother be blotted out."