6. Besides these, there are sacrifices at the death of every person of rank more or less bloody, according to their dignity. On the death of his mother, the king butchered no less than three thousand victims! and on his own death this number would probably be doubled. The funeral rites of a great captain were repeated weekly for three months; and 200 persons were slaughtered each time, or 2400 in all.

7. Some of these are freemen, as it is usual to 'wet the grave' with the blood of some persons of respectability. On some occasions the sacrifices consist of females. Slaves are continually sacrificed by their priests, over large brass pans, that their blood, mingling with various matter, may complete the charm.

8. When their crops are dug, the chiefs kill several slaves, that their blood may flow into the hole from whence the new yam has been taken. Those who cannot afford to kill slaves, take a head of one already sacrificed, and place it over the hole.,

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF DR. RITTENHOUSE.

1. DAVID RITTENHOUSE, an eminent philosopher, was descended from ancestors who emigrated from Holland, and was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, April 8, 1732. The early part of his life was spent in agricultural employments; and his plough, the fences, and even the stones of the field were marked with figures, which denoted a talent for mathematical studies.

2. A delicate constitution rendering him unfit for the labours of husbandry, he devoted himself to the trade of a clock and mathematical instrument maker. In these arts he was his own instructer. During his residence with his father in the country, he made himself master of Newton's Principia, which he read in the English translation of Mr. Mott.

3. Here also he became acquainted with fluxions, of which sublime invention he believed himself, for some time, the first author. He did not know for some years afterwards, that a contest had been carried on between Newton

At

and Leibnitz, for the honour of that great discovery. the age of twenty-three, without education, and without advantages, he became the rival of the two greatest mathematicians of Europe.

4. In his retired situation, while working at his trade, he planned and executed an orrery, by which he represented the revolutions of the heavenly bodies more completely than ever before had been done. This master-piece of mechanism was purchased by the college of New-Jersey.

5. A second was made by him, after the same model, for the use of the college of Philadelphia, where it has commanded, for many years, the admiration of the ingenious and the learned. In 1770, he was induced by the request of some friends, who knew his merit, to exchange his beloved retirement for a residence in Philadelphia. In this city he continued his employment for several years; and his clocks had a high reputation, and his mathematical instruments were thought superior to those imported from Europe.

6. His first communication to the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, of which he was elected a member, was a calculation of the transit of Venus, as it was to happen June 3, 1769. He was one of those appointed to observe it in the township of Norrington. This phenomenon had never been seen but twice before by any inhabitant of our earth, and would never be seen again by any person then living.

7. The day arrived, and there was no cloud in the horizon; the observers, in silent and trembling anxiety, waited for the predicted moment of observation; it came, and in the instant of contact between the planet and sun, an emotion of joy so powerful was excited in the breast of Mr. Rittenhouse, that he fainted. On the 9th of November following, he observed the transit of Mercury. An account of these observations was published in the transactions of the Society.

8. In 1775, he was appointed one of the commissioners for settling a territorial dispute between Pennsylvania and Virginia, and to his talents, moderation, and firmness, was ascribed, in a great degree, its satisfactory adjustment, in 1785. He assisted in determining the western limits of Pennsylvania in 1784, and the northern line of the same state in 1786.

9. He was also called upon to assist in fixing the boundary line between Massachusetts and New York in 1787. In his excursions through the wilderness he carried with him his habits of inquiry and observation. Nothing in our mountains, soils, rivers, and springs, escaped his notice. But the only records of what he collected are private letters, and the memories of his friends.

10. In 1791, he was chosen president of the Philosophical Society, as successor of Dr. Franklin, and was annually re-elected till his death. His unassuming dignity secured to him respect. Soon after he accepted the president's chair he made to the Society a donation of three hundred pounds. He held the office of treasurer of Pennsylvania, by an annual and unanimous vote of the legisla ture, from 1777 to 1789.

11. In this period he declined purchasing the smallest portion of the public debt of the state, lest his integrity should be impeached. In 1792, he accepted the office of director of the mint of the United States, but his ill state of health induced him to resign it in 1795. When the solitude of his study was rendered less agreeable by his indisposition, than in former years, he passed his evenings in reading or conversing with his wife and daughters.

12. In his last illness, which was acute and short, he retained the unusual patience and benevolence of his temper. He died June 26, 1796, in the sixty-fifth year of his age, in the full belief of the Christian religion, and in the anticipation of clearer discoveries of the perfections of God, in the eternal world.

13. He was a man of extensive knowledge. Being intimately acquainted with the French, German, and Dutch languages, he derived from them the discoveries of foreign nations. His mind was the repository of all ages and countries. He did not enjoy the advantages of a public education, but his mind was not shackled by its forms, nor interrupted in its pursuit of greater objects by the claims of subjects minute and trifling.

14. In his political sentiments he was a republican; he was taught by his father to admire an elective and representative government; he early predicted the immense increase of talents and knowledge which would be infused into the American mind by our republican institutions; and he anticipated the blessed effects of our revolution, in sow

ing the seeds of a new order of things in other parts of the world. He believed political as well as moral evil to be intruders into the society of man.

15. In the more limited circles of private life, he commanded esteem and affection. His house and manner of living exhibited the taste of a philosopher, the simplicity of a republican, and the temper of a Christian. His researches into natural philosophy gave him such ideas of the Divine perfections, for his mind was not preoccupied in early life with the fictions of ancient poets, and the vices of the heathen gods.

16. But he did not confine himself to the instruction of nature; he believed the Christian Revelation. He observed as an argument in favour of its truth, that the miracles of our Saviour differed from all pretended miracles in their being entirely of a benevolent nature. The testimony of a man, possessed of so exalted an understanding, outweighs the declarations of thousands.

17. He died believing in a life to come, and his body was interred beneath his observatory near his house. He published an oration delivered before the Philosophical Society, 1775, the subject of which is, the history of astronomy; and a few memoirs on mathematical and astronomical subjects, in the first four volumes of the transactions of the Society.

THE ETERNITY OF GOD.

1. THE eternity of God is a subject of contemplation, which, at the same time that it overwhelms us with astonishment and awe, affords us an immoveable ground of confidence in the midst of a changing world. All things which surround us, all these dying, mouldering inhabitants of time, must have had a Creator, for the plain reason, that they could not have created themselves.

2. And their Creator must have existed from all eternity, for the plain reason that the first cause must necessarily be uncaused. As we cannot suppose a beginning without a cause of existence, that which is the cause of all existence must be self-existent, and could have had no beginning. And, as it had no beginning, so also, it is beyond the

reach of all influence or control, as it is independent and almighty, it will have no end.

3. Here then is a support which will never fail; here is a foundation which can never be moved-the everlasting Creator of countless worlds, "the high and lofty one who inhabiteth eternity." What a sublime conception! He inhabits eternity, occupies this inconceivable duration, pervades and fills throughout this boundless dwelling.

4. Ages on ages before even the dust of which we are formed was created, He had existed in infinite majesty, and ages on ages will roll away after we have all returned to the dust whence we were taken, and still He will exist in infinite majesty, living in the eternity of his own nature, reigning in the plenitude of his own omnipotence, for ever sending forth the word which forms, supports, and governs all things, commanding new created light to shine on new created worlds, and raising up new created generations to inhabit them.

5. The contemplation of this glorious attribute of God is fitted to excite in our minds the most animating and consoling reflections. Standing, as we are, amid the ruins of time, and the wrecks of mortality, where every thing about is created and dependent, proceeding from nothing and hastening to destruction, we rejoice that something is presented to our view which has stood from everlasting, and will remain for ever.

6. When we have looked on the pleasures of life, and they have vanished away; when we have looked on the works of nature, and perceived that they were changing; on the monuments of art, and seen that they would not stand; on our friends, and they have fled while we were gazing; on ourselves, and felt that we were as fleeting as they; when we have looked on every object to which we could turn our anxious eyes, and they have all told us they could give us no hope or support, because they were so feeble themselves;

7. We can look to the throne of God: change and decay have never reached that; the revolution of ages has never moved it; the waves of an eternity have been rushing past, but it has remained unshaken; the waves of ano ther eternity are rushing towards it, but it is fixed, and can never be disturbed.

8. And blessed be God, who has assured us by a reve