When it permits the practice of polygamy, or encourages licentiousness in legalized forms by freedom of divorce, it violates the seventh law. When it taxes a helpless and prostrate people under forms of law, giving them by law none of the benefits for which governments are organized, it violates the eighth law. When it allows honored citizens whose life has been devoted to the public service of the community to be slandered by a sensational and unprincipled press, and continues to give the press its support, it violates the ninth law. When it depends wholly or chiefly on force to maintain these laws, failing to furnish such education as will make obedience to them voluntary and spontaneous, it violates the tenth law. These are the fundamental laws of human life. maintenance is essential to social order. No socalled laws are just which do not work in harmony with them.

Their

These ethical and spiritual laws, as simple as they are fundamental, are easily apprehended by mankind. Their sanction is in the universal conscience. This is the third principle of the Mosaic constitution. The force of these laws does not lie primarily in the power of the human governor to enforce it; nor does it lie in the consent of the governed; it lies in the inherent authority of divine law and in the sanction given to that law by human conscience. This principle is recognized in the history of the giving of the Ten Commandments. Moses, it is said, came down from Mount

Sinai, submitted to the people the question whether they would accept Jehovah as their king and his will as their law, and "all the people answered together and said, All that Jehovah hath spoken we will do." This acceptance by the people of the divine constitution gives to the Book of the Covenant, which contains the Ten Commandments, its name; gives, indeed, to the collection of books in which that Book of the Covenant is found the ancient title, the "Old Testament," or "Old Covenant." Throughout their history the relation between God and Israel was treated as a covenant relation. The prophetic indictments of Israel were not merely because they had violated the divine law, but because they had broken their covenant with their God. The law was not imposed upon them; it was accepted by them; its authority was divine, and they had recognized their obligations to obey it. This fact is written large in Hebrew history. There are no threats of punishment in a future life; there are no promises of rewards in a future life; no priesthood is vested with power to enforce the law by appeals to superstitious fears, as the law was enforced in the Middle Ages. Nor was there permitted to Israel in its governmental ideals a standing army to enforce against a recalcitrant people the laws which they had made their own by their acceptance of them. "Out of Zion shall come forth the law," said one of Israel's great prophets. That is, the obligation of law was a religious obligation recognized

by the conscience of the people to whom it was given.

These three principles, then, were at the foundation of the Hebraic commonwealth: first, that reverence for God and acceptance of his authority is the basis of a free state; second, that the general laws of the social order are very simple, though their applications may be diverse and complicated; third, that for a peaceful and a free people acceptance of these laws is necessary, and in a free commonwealth they must depend primarily for their support on the conscience of the people themselves. On these principles as a foundation was built the Hebraic commonwealth; history has proved them to be the foundation of all truly free governments. How they were applied in the Hebrew commonwealth will be the subject for consideration in the next chapter.

CHAPTER V

THE DEUTERONOMIC CODE

Ir is clear from the subsequent history of the Hebrews that only the foundations of the national structure were laid during the lifetime of Moses. The superstructure was not instantly reared thereon, but was the product of centuries of national growth. It does not come within the province of this volume to trace in detail the national history of Israel. The general outlines of that history are familiar to every reader of the English Bible. For three centuries the tribes existed in scattered and separate communities, without a constitution, an organized government, or effective law. Leaders arose from time to time called "judges," though their function was executive rather than judicial, and military rather than executive. These leaders were not elected by the people, nor did they inherit their office. They assumed authority by reason of some force or vigor of character which made them efficient in protecting the people against foreign foes, or made them the subjects of popular admiration by reason of special feats of valor.1 Much of the

1 "Their authority was divine, or, as we should say, moral, in its character; it rested upon that spontaneous recognition of the idea

time the tribes were subject to predatory raids by surrounding nations; part of the time they were in absolute subjection to cruel and unscrupulous foes. Within the tribes themselves there was practically no law. "Every man did what was right in his own eyes." At length, under one of these leaders Saul - the tribes were united in a vigorous and successful campaign; under his successor, David, they were organized into a united kingdom; and this kingdom, under his son Solomon, grew in size, in wealth, and in apparent prosperity. But the spirit of liberty in a people whose blood and whose essential principles united to make them jealous of their freedom, the spirit of restlessness which was inherited from their colonial days, and the grievous exactions levied upon them by a king who lived in almost Oriental splendor, induced rebellion after his death. In the reign of his successor ten of the twelve tribes seceded; the nation was rent in twain; a new capital was established; an idolatrous worship imitating that of Egypt was set up in Samaria for the seceding tribes; and the history of the Jews flows thereafter in a divided stream as that of Israel and Judah. After two hundred years of increasing profligacy, Israel, or more accurately a large proportion of its population, was carried away captive by the Assyrians, and their country was repopulated by a colony from the land of their captors. A mongrel population

of right which, though unexpressed, was alive and working among the tribes." The History of Israel, by Julius Wellhausen, p. 436.