fering only in degree of worth or excellence from
those of any other kind. What then could induce mankind universally to
imagine, that sacrifices of animals could be agreeable to those beings
whom they judged superior to themselves, and the proper objects of
religious adoration? Reason gives no sanction to the practice; on the
contrary, most positively condemns it, as unnecessary, unjust, cruel,
and therefore more likely to incur displeasure than to obtain favour.
Besides, it must always have been expensive, and very often dangerous,
so that we must entirely discard the notion of a sense of interest
having given occasion to it, unless we can prove, that some valuable
consequence was to result from it. This however cannot be done without
first shewing its acceptableness to the Being whose regard is thereby
solicited. There remain, perhaps, only two other motives which we can
conceive to have given origin to the custom, viz. some instinctive
principle of our nature by which we are led to it, independent of
either reason or a sense of interest, as in the case of our appetites,
and a positive injunction or command to that effect by some being
who has the requisite authority over our conduct. The author so often
alluded to, Dr Magee, who has so profoundly considered this subject in
his work on Atonement, &c. rejects the former supposition, affirming
that we have no natural instinct to gratify, in spilling the blood
of an innocent creature; and, as he has also set aside the other
two notions, of course, he adopts the latter as sufficient for the
solution of the question. The writer concurs in this opinion, but at
the same time, he thinks it of the utmost importance to observe, that
as the original injunction or command was assuredly subsequent to the
sense of moral delinquency, and was directed in the view of a
relief to the conscience of man, so the continuance of the practice,
according to any perversion of the primitive and consequently proper
institution, is always connected with, and in fact implies, the
existence of a feeling of personal demerit and danger. In other words,
he conceives there is a suitableness betwixt the operation of man's
conscience and that effectual remedy for its uneasiness to which the
original institution of animal sacrifices pointed. But it does not
follow from this, that man's conscience or reason, or any thing else
within him, could ever have made the discovery of the remedy. A sense
of his need