Theocracy, in its wars of extermination against the Canaanites and
Phoenicians, is to be found in a careful study of the foul and cruel
types of heathenism which those nations carried with them wherever their
colonies extended. A religion which enjoined universal prostitution, and
led thus to sodomy and the burning of young children in the fires of
Moloch, far exceeded the worst heathenism of Africa or the islands of
the Pacific. The Phoenician settlements on the Mediterranean have not
even yet recovered from the moral blight of that religion; and had such
a cultus been allowed to spread over all Europe and the world, not even
a second Deluge could have cleansed the earth of its defilement. The
extermination of the Canaanites, when considered as a part of one great
scheme for establishing in that same Palestine a purer and nobler faith,
and sending forth thence, not Phoenician corruption, but the Gospel of
Peace to all lands, becomes a work of mercy to the human race.

4. The ethics of the heathen will be found to vindicate the doctrines of
the Bible. This is a point which should be more thoroughly understood.
It has been common to parade the high moral maxims of heathen systems as
proofs against the exclusive claims of Christianity. But when carefully
considered, the lofty ethical truths found in all sacred books and
traditions, corroborate the doctrines of the Scriptures. They condemn
the nations "who hold the truth in unrighteousness." They enforce the
great doctrine that by their own consciences all mankind are convicted
of sin, and are in need of a vicarious righteousness,--a full and free
salvation by a divine power. My own experience has been, and it is
corroborated by that of many others, that very many truths of the
Gospel, when seen from the stand-point of heathenism, stand out with a
clearness never seen before.

Many prudential reasons like those which we have given for the study of