and mercy, rid us not only of these men, but
of their children after them. This tyrant, stained with lust and
wine and blood; this robber chieftain who privily in his lurking
dens murders the innocent, and ravishes the poor when he getteth him
into his net; this slave-hunting king who kills the captives whom he
cannot sell; and whose children after him will inevitably imitate
his cruelties and his rapine and treacheries--deal with him and his
as they deserve. Set an ungodly man to be ruler over him; that he
may find out what we have been enduring from his ungodly rule. Let
his days be few, and another take his office. Let his children be
fatherless, and his wife a widow. Let his children beg their bread
out of desolate places. Let there be no man to pity him or take
compassion on his fatherless children--to take his part, and breed
up a fresh race of tyrants to our misery. Let the extortioner
consume all he hath, and the stranger spoil his labour--for what he
has is itself taken by extortion, and he has spoiled the labour of
thousands. Let his posterity be destroyed, and in the next
generation his name be clean put out. Let the wickedness of his
father and the sin of his mother be had in remembrance in the sight
of the Lord; that he may root out the memorial of them from the
earth, and enable law and justice, peace and freedom to take the
place of anarchy and tyranny and blood.'

That prayer was answered--if we are to believe the records of
Norman, not English, monks in England after the Conquest, by the
speedy extinction of the most guilty families among the Norman
conquerors. It is being answered, thank God, in Hindostan at this
moment. It will surely be answered in Africa in God's good time;
for the Lord reigneth, be the nations never so unquiet. And we, if
we will read such words rationally and humanly, remembering the
state of society in which they were written--a state of society,
alas! which has endured, and still endures over a vast portion of
the habitable globe; where might is right, and there is little or no
principle, save those of lust and greed and revenge--then instead of
wishing such words out of the Bible, we shall be glad to keep them
there, as testimonies to the moral government of the world by a God
and a Christ who will surely avenge the innocent blood; and as a
Gospel of comfort to suffering millions, when the news reaches them
at last, that they may call on God to deliver them from t