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moving through the cornfields, and recording his solemn protest against the judicial murder of the wilderness, through free interpretation of the fourth commandment?

Are Sabbath-breakers liable to summary execution in this nineteenth century? Some zealous preachers of righteousness reply in the affirmative, by assuring us that the Tay Bridge disaster inflicted divine vengeance on Sunday travellers.

The fifth commandment promises longevity to those who honour their parents; but how was this precept understood among the Israelites? If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother; and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them; then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of the city, and unto the gates of his place. And they shall say unto the elders of his city-This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard. And all the men of the city shall stone him with stones that he die: so shalt thou

put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall

hear and fear.' 1

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Has human nature so completely changed since the Deuteronomist wrote, that a reign of terror in Hebrew homes was the most effectual means of improving the morals of the nation? Did the abiding fear of impending execution foster filial reverence towards those, who now may speak and act as parents, but anon assume the stern aspect of public prosecutors, demanding the

1 Deut. xxi. 18-21.

blood of their children? Were young and old divinely instructed in righteousness through the ghastly spectacle of ferocious piety inflicting death on naughty children by divine command, in a form which we reserve for some noxious reptile? We might answer that Deuteronomy is a legislative fiction of the reign of Josiah, and these impossible parents merely homicidal phantoms conjured by the anonymous author to frighten little boys into obedience; for is it possible to trace the hand of a veritable legislator, in the untenable assumption that all disobedient sons are gluttons and drunkards? But, whilst Orthodoxy presents us with Deuteronomy as the Word of God, we must still identify its teaching with Mosaic ethics, and thus inquire, whether Semitic views of parental and filial relationship surpass in excellence the uninspired conceptions of our Aryan kinsmen, whose illustrious Master, Sâkya-Muni, anticipated the moral precepts of Jesus of Nazareth, but one century later than the alleged discovery of the Book of Deuteronomy in the Temple?

The last five commandments of the Decalogue, in affirming the rules indispensable to social existence, at once disclose their merely human origin. It is obvious that, in the absence of laws protecting the rights of property, defining the relationship of sex, and prohibiting deeds of fraud and violence, association for tribal or national purposes would have been impossible, and man, driven by lawlessness into savage isolation, would have cultivated in sullen solitude the habits of ferocious brutes.

But apart from the conclusions of theoretic sociology, we learn from papyric and monumental evidence that

the ancient Egyptians had attained a civilisation impossible to men who had not yet learned the moral code of honest and peaceable citizenship. If it be, however, true that a Divine Code, inconceivable to merely human intelligence, was once miraculously revealed to a Chosen Race, may we not reasonably expect, in that highly favoured people, a far more noble conception of social duty than attainable by the less fortunate races deprived of divine enlightenment? And are these anticipations fulfilled in Hebrew versions of the social obligations involved in the last five commandments?

Thou shalt do no murder.' In what sense are these words understood in Hebrew Scripture? As a startling instance of wholesale murder, committed in cold blood on captive men, women, and children, by the command of Moses in the name of Jehovah, we refer our readers to the Semitic atrocities disclosed in the narrative of the sacred massacre of the Midianites;1 and proceed to illustrate Hebrew views of the sixth commandment through the legalised murder of slaves, and prophetic eulogy of assassination.

And if a man smite his servant or his maid with a rod, and he die under his hand, he shall be surely punished; notwithstanding if he continue a day or two he shall not be punished, for he is his money!'2 This is the language of Jehovah, and by this divine decree slaveowners might beat even female slaves to death with impunity, provided their victims lingered in agony till the second or third day, instead of being mercifully dispatched on the first. An opulent slaveowner with a natural or acquired taste for homicide, skilful in cal2 Exod. xxi. 20, 21.

1 Numb. xxxi.

culating the probable duration of life under given conditions of physical torture, could therefore gratify the worst instincts of a savage and vindictive nature by witnessing the sufferings of human beings, unprotected by any motive to mercy but the divine suggestion that they represented so much capital!

In Judges iv. we read the story of the assassination of Sisera. The Israelites having suffered twenty years' oppression under Jaban, King of Canaan, Deborah and Barak undertook their deliverance. A great battle was fought with the hosts of Jaban, under the command of Sisera, resulting in the defeat of the Canaanites, and the flight of their general, who, alighting from his chariot, fled swiftly from the field of battle towards the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, a friend and ally of King Jaban.

Jael invited him into her tent, satisfied his thirst with milk, covered him with a mantle, and promised to faithfully conceal him from his enemies. The unhappy fugitive, betrayed by her smiles, placed his life with trustful confidence in her hands, and sank into the deep sleep of exhaustion. Thus unconscious, he saw not the shadow of Jael, or the nail and hammer uplifted over his head. The treacherous woman and perjured hostess became the ruthless assassin of her sleeping guest, and the story of his murder stands forth prominently in Hebrew annals as one of the foulest crimes recorded in their blood-stained pages.

This felonious violation of the laws of hospitality, held sacred in the East from time immemorial, might be assigned to the religious fanaticism or personal cruelty of Jael, but that an eminent prophetess compromises

revelation by an inspired eulogium extolling the crime and the assassin.

These homicidal episodes in Hebrew Scripture obviously indicate that the sixth commandment, as interpreted among the Israelites, was not incompatible with deeds to which modern civilisation gives the names of murder and assassination.

The seventh commandment-accepted by modern piety as a divine revelation of the sacred obligations of marriage, which formed, however, the rule of domestic life among the ancient Egyptians, before the world had heard of Moses and the Prophets-was obviously interpreted among the Israelites in harmony with polygamy, concubinage, and a facility of divorce which gave to nuptial vows a purely nominal character.

We need not dwell upon the oft-told tale of Hebrew licentiousness, but illustrate how lightly they regarded matrimonial ties, by an episode in the early career of the pious David.

Once upon a time, according to 1 Samuel xxv., when Saul was yet king, and David a fugitive in the wilderness of Paran, there was a man in Maon named Nabal, possessed of numerous flocks of sheep and goats, and a beautiful wife—Abigail, of good understanding, which meant, in her case, considerable aptitude for looking after her own interests. Nabal, the husband of this charming and accomplished woman, is depicted as a churlish fellow guilty of a fault common in modern life, namely, unwillingness to part with his own to strangers, without clearly understanding why.

David sent Nabal a polite message, soliciting his friendship and any more substantial gifts he might feel

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