like those at Karnac, to this day, again, testify. But this civilization was idolatrous, monarchical, sensual, and depraved. Their best worship was that of Osiris and Isis, while their common and general religion descended to the worship of animals, vegetables, and the basest of reptiles.1 Men are as they worship. We have therefore a state of society in Ancient Egypt never exceeded, and probably not reached, by Greece or Rome in their days of lowest vice and depravity. The reading of what modern discovery has revealed in the inscriptions of the ancient ruins, carries us back to a civilization which, however surprisingly advanced in certain respects, was yet a civilization of ambition, lust of power and domain, blood-thirst, superstition, and sensuality.

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The Hebrew civilization, on the other hand, born suddenly and brought to a great degree of maturity in the wilderness of Sinai, if wanting in the science and art of Egypt, was yet possessed remarkably of other elements, and those which enter more into the constitution of true civilization, more the essence of civilization. It was a civilization of high principles and practices in the customs and relations of life. Justice, generosity, and mercy were eminent traits. Its religion was spiritual; its worship that of the true and living God. Men are as they worship, again. It was also a free, republican civilization of the purest form. If we estitimate therefore a civilization by the refinement of a people's manners and feelings, and their remoteness from savage grossness, which we maintain is a truer standard of estimation than improvement in arts and learning, we must rank the Hebrew civilization in the first order, and far before the Egyptian. We would say that a moral civilization, if we can so distinguish, is higher than an intellectual. Christian civilization is higher than any infidel or pagan civilization the world ever saw. England would not wish to change her civilization for that of Greece or Rome in their most exalted days. And this was just the difference between

1 Posterity might repeat the saying which had formerly been applied to the sacred animals of the same country: That in Egypt it was less difficult to find a god than a man. — Gibbon, Decl. and Fall of Rom. Emp., Vol. III. p. 524.

Hebrew and Egyptian civilization. How could such a civilization have arisen under, or together with, a barbarous and bloody code of laws?

This code, too, was evidently designed to subserve the ends of good government, the protection of life, liberty, and property, and the maintenance of the public peace and welfare. We may instance the judicial arrangements.1 Judges were to be appointed in all the gates who should judge the people with just judgment. They were neither to wrest judgment, respect persons, nor take gifts. Also the laws regarding murder, theft, and personal injuries. A code of laws designed, and we must say efficiently, and therefore, to a degree at least, wisely designed, to preserve equity, quiet, prosperity, and good habits, can hardly be called a barbarous one.

This code, again, is the immediate source and groundwork of the laws and institutions of our own country. And could we say that our laws and institutions sprang from a barbarous source? They were modelled immediately upon the Mosaic. Sometimes it was more than this. One of our colonies adopted as an article of its organization, that it would be ordered in its civil affairs, as well as in its ecclesiastical, by those rules which the scripture holds forth, referring principally to the Mosaic laws. In another, "in the absence of special laws, the rules of the word of God were to be followed." 2 We feel that there is not a freer, more enlightened, and efficient government in the world than our own, and that civil, political, religious, and educational blessings are nowhere enjoyed as in this land. And just that which gives us this superiority over all other lands we owe to that framework of law created in the wilderness of Sinai nearly fifteen hundred years before Christ.

One remarkable difference between the Mosaic and every other civil code, is the fact that it provides that the commission of wrong shall be remembered not merely as offence against law, but as sin against God. No other code of laws

1 Deut. xvi. 18-20.

2 Palfrey, Hist. New Eng., Vol. I. pp. 529, 536,

does this. It is sufficient with other codes that offence be convicted as against law. They end with conveying the knowledge of themselves and their penalties. They have no other respect to command than for themselves. They reach and care for men in no other relations than in those among themselves, and to the domain of nature over which they have authority. What shall we say, then, of a code of laws bearing in its own structure a remembrance of the Source of all law and authority, and providing that men, in obeying its statutes, shall think of the Supreme King and Lawgiver, and of themselves, in breaking them, as commit ting offence first of all against Him? Who can call that a barbarous code which in this way powerfully tends to promote the purest and highest culture and discipline of men?

It is another thing worthy of notice, that, notwithstanding the early period, and the fact that while the only modes of government then known and prevalent were despotic, save the patriarchal, that of Moses was republican. His code was a republican code. His own account of the constitution of the government in republican form - how he arranged the offices and ordered the elections is to be found in the first chapter of Deuteronomy. And by the way, from the thirteenth verse of this chapter a sermon was preached, we are told, at the organization of the government of the Connecticut Colony, deducing these three very republican doctrines: 1. The choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people by God's own allowance. 2. The privilege of election which belongs to the people must not be exercised according to their humors, but according to the blessed will of God. 3. They who have power to appoint officers and magistrates, it is in their power also to set the bounds and limitations of the power and place unto which they call them.1

To us, who are familiar with, and accustomed to, republican institutions, this seems the best and simplest method in which to proceed, the first which would occur to the mind

1 Palfrey, Vol. I. pp. 536, 537.

of a wise and honest legislator. But in that day, when such institutions were unheard of, when all existing governments had arisen by pure force, and were maintained by virtue of force, it was a different thing. It bore the character of a new invention, an untried theory. There were no examples from which to copy; none to tell how it would succeed, nor to point out what were the dangers to be avoided, and what the parts to be strengthened. But remarking the simple fact that it was republican, it cannot be called a barbarous code. Republicanism is a political form belonging only to the highest degree of enlightenment and individual culture. The political form of barbarism is monarchical despotism. Whenever despotism is saddled upon an enlightened society, we feel that it is out of place. We sympathize with the revolutionary efforts as right, which are made to throw it

off.

Beforehand, then, we have reason to believe that the Mosaic code is far from being of the low order and character some would have us think.

The particular ground upon which the charge that "the Mosaic code is barbarous and bloody" is made to rest, is the stringency of its laws and the severity of its penalties.

Of the stringency of its laws, it is only worth while to remark, that it is not a mark of barbarism, but of the opposite. Barbarism is lax. It allows great license in every direction of crime. It is rigorous only in certain forms and on certain occasions. A man may murder, only not within a certain limit of persons, and he may be severely punished, provided those interested in seeing him punished have sufficient power to do it. He may lie, cheat, and steal, and it is a virtue, provided he is not found out. He may gratify his lust to any extent, and it is no crime, provided he has ability to face a father's, brother's, or husband's vengeance. Stringency is a mark of high moral tone, high sense and high aim in morals and discipline. As a general and pervading trait, it can belong only to a state of civilization and enlightenment.

As for its penalties, they were not so much more severe VOL. XIX. No. 74.

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than the modern, if at all, and far less so than the penalties of the most enlightened and civilized parts of the world have been within two centuries of the present time. And if modern penalties are less severe, it remains to be proved whether they have not crossed the true line which divides severity from laxity, and whether the Mosaic do not lie upon that line; or if the Mosaic were severer than would now be required, whether, under those peculiar circumstances, that severity was not what true humanity and a high civilization required.

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The penalties of the Mosaic code were these : ing, never more than forty stripes; rendering like for like, eye for eye, etc.; restitution with compensation; and death, first, by the sword; second, by stoning. Here, the charge of severity can rest only against the death-penalty. The others are eminently moderate. The death-penalty was inflicted in five classes of crimes: 1 1. Murder. 2. Treason. 3. Man-stealing. 4. Gross sensuality. 5. Perverse filial disobedience. Under the head of treason are classed witchcraft, sorcery, false prophesying, idolatry, and proselytism to idolatry. Such was their character, as will be readily seen when it is remembered that the Hebrew Republic was also a Theocracy; and it was the reason, manifestly, of their being followed by the death-penalty. Gross sensuality, likewise, includes several different forms of the crime of adultery. The whole number of instances in which the death-penalty was attached, under these five classes, was fourteen. It is stated3 that less than two hundred years since, the number of crimes to which the deathpenalty was attached in England was one hundred and fortyeight. Under the State law of Massachusetts, the deathpenalty is laid only upon the crime of murder. Under the United States laws, it is laid upon murder, treason, piracy,

1 Professor Wines, Commentaries on the Laws of the Ancient Hebrews, makes but four classes, omitting man-stealing. See page 263.

2 Professor Wines says, page 263, seventeen. examination, we can only make fourteen.

Wines, p. 263.

After examination and re