When fatal or pernicious consequences were produced by the indulgence of the angry passions, the offender was punished with various degrees of severity, according to the degrees of aggravation in the circumstances. In the commission of "wilful injuries, the law of retaliation required an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, stripe for stripe." A false witness also was sentenced to suffer the evil which would have been inflicted upon the accused person, had his testimony received credit. "The judges shall make diligent inquisition, and behold if the witness be a false witness, and bath testified falsely against his brother, then shall ye do unto him as he had thought to have done unto his brother; so shalt thou put the evil away from among you."

In cases of Theft, the Mosaic laws did not place the value of an ox, a sheep, an ass, upon a level with that of an individual of the human species. They remained satisfied with the milder, more equitable, and probably, more efficacious penalties, of restoring threefold, fourfold, or fivefold, according to the degrees of criminality attendant upon the offence.

The strictest equity in commercial dealings is enjoined by the following law: "Thou shalt

not have in thy bag divers weights, a great and a small thou shalt have a perfect and just weight; a perfect and just measure shalt thou have for all that do such things, and all that do unrighteously, are an abomination unto the Lord thy God."

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In all their civil and municipal laws, the prevalence of wisdom and equity, united with mildness, is most conspicuous. The utmost attention was paid to the distresses of the poor and the debtor, in every injunction respecting them. The regulations to be observed at the season of harvest were kind and liberal. "And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not make clean riddance of the corners of thy field, when thou reapest; neither shalt thou gather any gleanings of thy harvest; thou shalt leave them to the poor and the stranger; I am the Lord your God." Again: "When thou cuttest down thine harvest in the field; and hast forgot a sheaf in the 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 works of thine hands." "When thou beatest thine olive tree, thou shall not go over the boughs again; it shall be for the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow. When thou gatherest

the grapes of thy vineyard, thou shalt not glean it afterwards; it shall be for the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow."

The following prohibitions are replete with humanity: "Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind; thou shall not avenge or bear any grudge against the children of thy people; but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. I am the Lord." "When thou buildest a new house, then thou shalt make a battlement of thy roof, that thou bring not blood upon thine house, if any man fall from thence."

Every seventh year constituted a kind of pause in their secular concerns; and it had some degree of influence, to check the increase of that inequality to which there is a perpetual -tendency, in all civil societies. The law to be observed every seventh year

operated like a

At the end of

stated bill of insolvency. every seventh year thou shalt make a release; and this is the manner of the release. Every creditor that lendeth ought to his neighbour ishall release it. He shall not exact sit of his neighbour, or of his brother. Because it is called the Lord's release." This law was only

obligatory towards a neighbour or a brother; the debt might be reclaimed of a stranger. According to the principles of equity, a claim of right might have been made in each case. The remission to those who were so closely connected, was rendered obligatory alone by the command of God; and the injunction was doubtless to strengthen the bonds of friendship, and of brotherly love. Yet in cases of great distress, a more remote connection than that of neighbourhood or fraternity, was sufficient to impose an obligation to benevolence. "If there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren within any of thy gates, in thy land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor brothers but thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him, and shalt surely lend him sufficient for his need, in that which he wanteth. Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart, saying, The seventh year, the the year release, is at hand; and thine eye be evil against thy poor brother, and thou givest him nought; and he cry unto the Lord against thee, and it be a sin unto thee. Thou shalt surely give him; and thine heart shall not be grieved when thou givest unto him." Regulations were also established respecting their domestic slaves, and the

1

of

DISPENSATION.

I

Li

ARY

UNIVERSITY

CALITORNIA

prisoners taken in war, which breathed a genuine spirit of benevolence and humanity; having a tendency to meliorate a state which the com plexion of the times seemed to authorize; and totally different from that unlimited power exercised by the heathen nations over their captives and slaves; or even by Christians in more enlightened days.

The commotions which such changes had a tendency to introduce, might have been very injurious, had not the intervention of a sabbatical year been instituted; preparatory to which the sovereign of universal Nature augmented the produce of the preceding year, to a degree sufficient for the support of the inhabitants during the seventh, in which those regulations were to take place."

The Fiftieth Year, or the year of Jubilee, constituted an æra still more important. Its grand object was still more effectually to counteract those inequalites, as far as it was practicable, to which all human affairs are perpetually tending, from that diversity of talents and dispositions which characterizes humanity, and is productive of the most opposite conse

*See Note D.