That it was humane, we say without hesitation. Let them who have run their eye over the Pentateuch in search for cruel horrors dwell upon passages like

"Thou shalt not pervert the judgment of the stranger, nor of the fatherless, nor take the widow's raiment to pledge; but thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in Egypt, and the Lord thy God redeemed thee thence: therefore I command thee to do this thing.

"When thou cuttest down thine harvest in thy field, and hast forgot a sheaf in thy field, thou shalt not go again to fetch it: it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow; that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hands. When thou gatherest the grapes of thy vineyard, thou shalt not glean it afterward: it shall be for the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow. And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt: therefore I command thee to do this thing.” - Deut. xxiv. 17-22.

The code is full of such tokens of humanity. The Sabbatical year and year of jubilee provided for a periodical abatement of grievances, secured to every man freedom from oppressive creditors, and the inalienable possession of his homestead. In some points Christian powers, whether monarchical or republican, may learn humanity from the system which vulgar infidelity so often stigmatizes as the quintessence of cruelty.

Equal, pacific, and humane, the Mosaic civil law stands a stately monument of an age when the world was in darkness and the lands from which the light

of jurisprudence have since beamed were an unbroken wilderness.

Put all parts of the message together, its fundamental principle, its ecclesiastical polity, and its civil code, may we not say that it proves at once the greatness of the man and the authority of the mission? Nationality, indeed, exclusive nationality, pervades the whole dispensation; but mark well the fact, that this nationality contained within itself the seeds of its own enlargement into a broad humanity. The one nation was to be prepared to become the teacher of all nations. The seed given of God was planted within a walled garden, guarded from harm, and fed with rain and dew from heaven. Complain not of the temporary inclosure. Remember that the fruit there borne is to be for the use of the nations, and in the fulness of time branches from that tree are to take root in every land on earth.

Tenderly, indeed, we ought to regard the fortunes of this oldest of republics, this nation of Israel, that began its career, as did our people, with thirteen tribes or estates, and based legislation, not upon men, but upon laws, and appealed to God as the only king. We know that the New Testament places the names of Jesus and Moses in intimate connection, and sometimes in contrast. How can we help asking, as we leave the topic before us, What have we now to do with the Hebrew leader, what has the dispensation of grace and truth to do with the dispensation of law?

Shall we say, let bygones be bygones, or the dead bury their dead, and the past take care of itself? The past is not to the mind bygone, nor are any of

the great lights of our race dead either in our faith or our judgment. Strange as it may seem to us, former ages come nearer to us as in date we recede from them, and humanity gains instead of losing her ancient treasures. The learning of our scholars revives past centuries, and restores to us their sages and institutions. The pickaxe of a French engineer, in turning up a block of black basalt on the left bank of the Nile, brought to light the buried generations of Egypt, by furnishing in its three parallel inscriptions the key to the hieroglyphic language; and we know more of the minutia of life in Egypt under the Pharaohs, than of life in England under the Saxon kings. The light is breaking upon other buried treasures, and with the rise of a nobler intellectual and moral enthusiasm, and broader humanity, we may expect the combined wisdom of the past to rise from its sepulchres to hold out its torch, not to deepen our funeral lamentations, but to cheer and guide our march of improvement and regeneration.

The Bible, indeed, embalms for us the fame of Moses, and his law comes to us through a succession of living men. But sadly has the genius of his system been misinterpreted, and priestcraft has misapplied to its own aggrandizement a gift which should be a blessing to mankind. His mind was at once reverent, bold, and progressive. Ancient manners and customs he retained when not unworthy, and when these were objectionable he modified, if the time had not come for eradicating, them. The demands of his own age he met with uncompromising energy, and left the door open for future improvement. As a teacher of religion, he now of course

yields to that Messiah whom he foresaw and foretold. As a statesman, he is without an equal, and as such he stands before Christendom in unparalleled grandeur. Solon, Lycurgus, and Numa might well call him master, and Justinian and Tribonian lay their Pandects in humility at his feet. As for those men who have dreamed of distancing all practical experience and ancient wisdom by their Utopian theories of a perfect state, the Platos, Harringtons, Mores,— they serve but to add honor to the lawgiver whose system, alike in its inherent excellence and its practical efficiency, has but risen in repute during the more than thirty centuries that have seen the rise and wreck of so many proud dynasties. Moreover, the recent experience in forming new civil constitutions on theoretic principles has been such as to reflect new light upon the mission of the great Hebrew. Our own national constitution was not the offspring of a single convention, but the result of centuries of experience under the training of men far from being strangers to the Mosaic wisdom. Representative government, civil equality, popular education, confederate states in national unity, allegiance to a Divine Sovereign, an agricultural population relying upon their own attachment to the soil for self-defence without a standing army, — these principles were not the growth of a day. Our fathers learned to trace them out in the much-loved pages of the Pentateuch, and the developments of Providence enabled them to give a nobler illustration of those principles than the world had yet seen.

Think of the lawgiver upon his sublime death-bed, and what associations crowd upon the mind! He

looked with yearning to a land that he was not to enter, and to a future which in the body he was not to see. How has that future justified his hope, and accepted his idea! Curses like those to be uttered from the barren crags of Ebal upon the disobedient have in all time descended upon nations not reverent towards a supreme law; blessings like those promised upon blooming Gerizim have followed in the path of firm and equal law. Humanity stands like Moses on Pisgah, and our own age entering on a promised land opens a future which itself will not see. That future will be auspicious, if the lessons of sainted fathers are heeded, if coöperation takes the place of strife, and passions are made to bow before the majesty which just law represents, and the eternal God enthrones.

Humanity yearns for statesmen who shall be as efficient and enlightened, and who shall adapt legislation to the needs of men and the call of Providence. 'The statesman's office has the sanction of God, alike by the gift of requisite powers and the testimony of ancient dispensations. The wretched demagogues, who think only of passing expediency, and who know nothing of the distant aim and self-denial which are willing to offend the multitude for a time to bless them in the end, deserve not the august name of statesmen. We yearn for true sages in the science of society, alike wise and efficient in planning the laws of the statute-book, and devising modes for combining into due order the too chaotic social elements, and preparing to realize the Christian idea of a kingdom of God on earth.

If the vision be not realized in our day, it is good,