For, if these Canaanites had been the full children of Adam and Eve, they would have been as much entitled to the land, under the grant by God, of the whole earth, to Adam and his posterity, with the right of dominion, and their right to it as perfect as that of Abraham could possibly be; but, being partly _beasts_ and partly _human_, God not only dispossessed them of it, but also ordered their _entire_ extermination, _for he had given no part of the earth to such beings_. This judgment of God on these people has been harped upon by every deistical and atheistical writer, from the days of Celsus down to Thomas Paine of the present age, but without understanding it. This crime must be unspeakably great, when we read, as we do in the Bible, that it caused God to repent and to be grieved at his heart that he had made _man_. For, the debasing idolatry of the world, the murder of the good and noble of earth, the forswearing of the apostle Peter in denying his Lord and Saviour--all, all the crimsoned crimes of earth, or within the power of man's infamy and turpitude to commit and blacken his soul--are as nothing on earth, as compared with this. Death by the flood, death by the scorching fire of God burning alive the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, death to man, woman and child, flocks and herds, remorseless, relentless and exterminating death--is the _just judgment_ of an _all-merciful God, for this offense_. The seed of Adam, which is the seed of God, must be kept pure; it _shall be kept pure, is the fiat of the Almighty_. Man perils his existence, nations peril their existence and destruction, if they support, countenance, or permit it. Such have been God's dealings with it heretofore, and such will be his dealings with it hereafter.