Is it unnatural? We have once seen, with our own eyes, a very large
unroasted "small pig" devour one of her own piglets, whilst the others
lustily drew nourishment from the grunting mother. It look our appetite
away for forty-eight hours; yet it was nature; and in some portions of
Europe, people express the highest degree of fondness by the expressive
phrase,--"I could eat you." We may rely upon it, that, as Mr. Agassiz
says,--"There is no difference in kind, but only in degree."
With reference to religion, we readily acknowledge that dining _a la
Fijienne_ does not appear exactly to be a divine institution, as slavery
has recently been discovered to be. From olden times it used to be the
belief of superstitious man that there was a divine afflatus in liberty;
but our profound theological scholars and Biblical critics have found
out that the divinity is on the other side. Neither Tertullian nor
Austin, neither St. Bernard nor any Pope, good or bad, neither Luther,
Bossuet, Calvin, nor Baxter, no commentator, exegetist, or preacher,
ever found out, what these profoundest inquirers have at length
discovered, that slavery is divine, like matrimony.
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