se strokes which were destined for men, their great care was for
nothing more than to conciliate their favor by so easy a method. It is
the nature of violent desires and excessive fear to know no bounds, and
therefore, when they would ask for any favor which they ardently wished
for, or would deprecate some public calamity which they feared, the
blood of animals was not deemed a price sufficient, but they began to
shed that of men. It is probable, as we have said, that this barbarous
practice was formerly almost universal, and that it is of very remote
antiquity. In time of war the captives were chosen for this purpose, but
in time of peace they took the slaves. The choice was partly regulated
by the opinion of the bystanders, and partly by lot. But they did not
always sacrifice such mean persons. In great calamities, in a pressing
famine, for example, if the people thought they had some pretext to
impute the cause of it to their _king_, they even sacrificed him without
hesitation, as the _highest price_ with which they could purchase the
Divine favor. In this manner, the first King of Vermaland (a province of
Sweden) was burnt in honor of Odin, the Supreme God, to put an end to a
great dearth; as we read in the history of Norway. The kings, in their
turn, did not spare the blood of their subjects; and many of them even
shed that of their children. Earl Hakon, of Norway, offered his son in
sacrifice, to obtain of Odin the victory over the Jomsburg pirates. Aun,
King of Sweden, devoted to Odin the blood of his nine sons, to prevail
on that god to prolong his life. Some of the kings of Israel offered up
their first-born sons as a sacrifice to the god Baal or Moloch.

The altar of Moloch reeked with blood. Children were sacrificed and
burned in the fire to him, while trumpets and flutes drowned their
screams, and the mothers looked on, and were bound to restrain their
tears.

The Phenicians offered to the gods, in times of war and drought, the
fairest of their children. The books of Sanchoniathon and Byblian Philo
are full of accounts of such sacrifices. In Byblos boys were immolated
to Adonis; and, on the founding of a city or colony, a sacrifice of a
vast number of children was solemnized, in the hopes of thereby averting
misfortune from the new settlement. The Phenicians, according to
Eusebius, yearly sacrificed their dearest, and even their only children,
to Saturn. The bones of the victims were preserved in the temple