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WAR.
53

sible situation, be ordered two prisoners, whom he had taken, to be put to death, and their flesh to be devoured by his soldiers.

"In the year 1777, being on board an English ship of war in Turon harbour, in order to return from Cochinchina to Europe, a party arrived there who had joined a powerful rebel named Nhae. This leader and his party had taken some of the king's confidental friends, and one in particular who had formerly done him a great deal of injury. The latter they put to death; and in order to gratify their revenge, they tore out his liver and ate it. The Cochinchinese, in general, when violently incensed against any one, are accustomed to express a wish that they may be able to devour his liver or his flesh."

Where is human reason and humanity when inclination is unrestrained? It is evident there is no bounds to the tyranny of man. He lords it equally over his own kind and over those he denominates brutes. Nay, there are of the race of man, who exhibit human flesh as a marketable commodity. See "Modern Universal History," vol. 16 passim, but particularly pages 350, 448.

War is the butchery of man by man; a practice in direct opposition to the plainest principles and and express precepts of Christ. It were loss of time to produce quotations. The whole tenor of the doctrines of the New Testament inculcate love, charity, forbearance, meekness, gentleness, and good will. It is only by outrages against all that is delightful in social converse, and beautiful in moral and divine principle, that the heavenly doctrines of our Saviour are perverted and destroyed. Scenes of brutality, drunkenness and gambling are deemed the proper seminaries for those qualities which distinguish the soldier.