must be returned to
him as a free-will gift. In many countries, the victims offered to the
deity were captives taken in war; but, as prisoners of war and slaves
were not permitted to join in the battles of their captors, their lives
were of little value; hence, later, it is observed that the sacrificial
victim must be a prince or an individual whose life was of great
importance to the tribe.

As in all hot countries the heat of the sun is the most destructive
agency against which mankind have to contend, it is not perhaps
singular, at a time when superstition had usurped the functions of the
reasoning powers, that the sun-god should have been invested with the
attributes inspired by terror, and that so far as possible, mankind
should have deemed it necessary to propitiate its wrath, and, by
rendering to it suitable offerings and sacrifices, they should have
hoped to avert the calamities incident to its displeasure. Neither is it
remarkable when we remember the peculiar circumstances surrounding the
Jews, and the fact that the offerings demanded by their god was the life
which he had bestowed, that the sacrifices offered to Moloch, the fire
god, should have been the members of their own household--namely, their
children.

We must not forget that the reward promised this people by prophet,
priest, and diviner for godliness was extreme fruitfulness of body. We
have seen that to obtain this mark of godly favor, or, under pretense of
serving their god, the form of worship prescribed by their priests, and
adopted both in their households and in their temples was pre-eminently
sensual, and calculated to stimulate and encourage to the highest extent
their lower or animal nature.

As the size of a man's family, or his power to reproduce, was an index
to his favor with the Almighty the pleasure of the "Lord" in this
matter being but the reflection of his own desires, the result as might
reasonably be expected was overpopulation to such an extent that the
means of subsistence within the small boundary of Judea was
inadequate to supply the demands of the swarming masses of "God's
children"--children which had been created for his honor and glory.
Surely some plan must be devised whereby these difficulties might be
adjusted, and that, too, to use a modern expression, without flying in
the face of Providence. As the Lord had been honored and man blessed
in the mere bringing forth of offspring, what better scheme, so soon as
such