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in the days of Jesus. "This is an hard saying, who can bear it?" But the fruits of victory are so sweet that the wisdom of law is more than justified. What could more powerfully tend to the development of pure-mindedness than the deprecation of impure thoughts? and what is nobler and sweeter, and what more fitting as a preparation for exaltation to immortal life, than that “holiness both of body and spirit" which such a law tends to engender? In this respect it is like the command to bear injuries unresentfully; it is a powerful self-circumcision which chastens and subdues the natural man, and leaves room for the growth of that new man "which after (the image of) God is created in righteousness and true holiness" (Eph. iv. 24).

"Thou shalt not steal." This, the eighth commandment, is well known to all the world. As a rule of human conduct it seems very much a matter of course, but on reflection, it will appear that this is only the result of familiarity. Apart from law, there is no reason why one man should not take what is in another man's possession if he can, like the beasts of the field. This is what men are seeing in the wrong sense. Atheism obliterates divine law, and then reason acting on wrong premises, provokes anarchy and socialism. But atheism is folly and falsehood. God is the only sufficient explanation of the universe of wisdom and power in which we live and which exists in Him. His spoken word is the only rational basis of law for man. The eighth com mandment is part of His spoken word. It bears the impress of its origin. It was a consummate legislative achievement to invent a name for the wrongful act of taking, and to prohibit the act under that name. To have said "Thou shalt not wrongfully acquire," or "Thou shalt not take what is in the use of another," would not have been nearly so telling. It would have meant the same in effect, but would not have invested the act with the obloquy attaching to a single deprecatory

term.

The commandment is a recognition of personal possession as the basis of society. No other basis can be conceived as a practical one. If the sum total belonged to all, as in the schemes of socialism, there would be no scope for ndividual character and responsibility, and human character would dwarf to a workhouse level. If nothing were allowed to belong to any, each would take and keep by force what he could get, and the conflict of individual graspings would reduce life to a chaos and the world to a desert. The simple but wise and powerful law that each man shall have the right to possess what he can lawfully acquire, modified by those other laws that require him to consider his neighbour and to contribute to the well-being of the whole, is the sure basis of social order and civilised human life. It only requires to be

regulated by infallible and just authority to make the earth an abode of joyful life. This will be realised in the Kingdom of God, and not before. How far individual possession will be a feature of immortal life in the perfect age beyond, has not been fully revealed. There appears to be a hint in that direction in the use of the word "inherit,” as applied to the Kingdom of God, taken in connection with the intimation that "he that soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully," and that those who are faithful in the use of the unrighteous mammon shall have "true riches" confided to their keeping. Any way, we know that all will be well when "the tabernacle of God is with men."

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"Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour; command by its own force places truth-speaking on the basis of moral obligation. To say what is not true seems in itself a cowardly and a mean thing scientifically and artistically considered. It is an offence against the laws of harmony and correct adjustment. But by this command (which occurs in many forms throughout the Scriptures), it becomes wrong and criminal and hateful. Truth-speaking is as noble as lying is contemptible. "All liars shall have their portion in the lake of fire that burneth with fire and brimstone" (Rev. xxi. 8).

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"Thou shalt not covet anything that is thy neighbour's.' This is the finishing excellence of all these beneficent commandments. A man might might worship, observe the Sabbath, revere parents, and refrain from murder, adultery, theft, and lying, and yet have an avaricious eye on all that was around him. What a blemish would this be in an otherwise beautiful character. Disinterestedness comes in as

a polish on all the precious stones.

Well might Moses extol the law, of which, though described by his name, he disclaimed the authorship. Well might he say: Keep, therefore, and do them, for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations which shall hear all these statutes and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. What nation is there so great that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law which I have set before you this day." This encomium is applicable to the whole law, but especially to the Ten Commandments, which are its kernel.

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It will be our duty in future chapters, if God permit, to pass the general body of the law under review, in the two aspects expressed in our general title-1, as a rule of national life, and the enigmatic enunciation of Divine principles and purposes.

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CHAPTER VIII.-THE LAND.

HE law of Moses was a civil polity as well as a system of spiritual guidance and prophecy, that is, it was a system of

rules for regulating the relations of mortals living together as a community, as well as a revelation of individual principles of action and the foreshadowing of the divine purpose with man. It will be profitable to look at it in this character before entering upon the significances concealed in its ceremonies.

It differs in many important respects from the systems upon which modern civilisation is based. In some respects, the differences may appear to be in favour of modern systems, but on consideration it may be found that this feeling is due to the mere bias of habitude, and that the law of Moses was more calculated to evoke the true conditions of social well-being, than the current modern systems.

It certainly cannot be said that modern systems are a success. They have developed two hurtful extremes they have, on the one hand, created exaggerated individual importances as the adjunct of congested wealth, and on the other, they have debased vast masses of mankind by disconnection from hereditary estate, and subjection to incessant toil for a bare subsistence. Between the two, the true aims of human life have been lost, and abortion of all kinds produced. Mankind, instead of living together as the common and delighted sharers of a mutually ensured benefaction, are insulated from each other by exigencies which compel them to be competitors, and reduce them to the position of a scrambling crowd of dogs, quarrelling over food thrown promiscuously among them. Under such conditions, the evil in human nature gets the hopeless upper hand. The good that many would rejoice to see is choked and extinguished in the war of conflicting interests.

The law of Moses was designed and adapted for a people living on the land in limited individual holdings, and not for masses crowded together in great cities. In this, it showed a feature of wisdom that is now being recognised. Politicians of a philanthropic turn are agitating for the settlement of the people on the land as one remedy for the threatening social maladies of the state. They find their ideas make slow headway. The land is everywhere in the hands of a caste. The ground wants clearing as it only can be cleared by power. In France, the power

took a revolutionary form, and gave only a partial result because it was human.

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In the land for which the law of Moses was designed, the ground was cleared by the hand of divine power co-operating with Israel. effectual clearance was divinely ordered to be made by the extermination of the wicked inhabitants of the land. 'Slay utterly old and young leave nothing behind that breatheth." On the land thus cleared, a new settlement was made on a basis that has never been approached by human legislation for wisdom and beneficence. this when we ask—what are the objects to be aimed at in the employ ment of the land? The land is the source of what man requires, and it ought to be so handled as that its benefits should be generally diffused among all the population, and this system of general diffusion of benefit should be protected from the encroachment of individual avarice or the exigencies of individual misfortune. Under the Gentile law, capable greed can add field to field till there is no room for the less gifted, or misfortune can shake a man out of his land and reduce him to permanent beggary. This ought not to be. The land ought to be as unmonopoliseable as the air of heaven, because it was intended that all men should be served by the field. It ought not to be in the power of any man to annex vast areas which are for the common weal. It ought not to be in the power of misfortune to remove the population from the land and huddle them into pens. The difficulty is to combine this freedom with secure individual possession and liberty of traffic. The difficulty is effectually solved by the land law that God gave to Israel.

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First of all, the land was to be divided among the people, to every family a possession, according to their number. "Ye shall divide the land by lot for an inheritance amongst your families to the more ye shall give the more inheritance, and to the fewer, ye shall give the less inheritance" (Num. xxxiii. 54). The division was not to be by caprice or partiality or favour. Every man's inheritance shall be in the place where his lot falleth" (ib.). This injunction was fully carried out when the conquest of the land had been effected. It is one of the most interesting of the transactions recorded in the division of the land, though at first the driest looking. It would be far from a dry business to those who, after 40 years weary wilderness life, were waiting to know the spot on which they were to settle. The description of the process occupies seven or eight whole chapters in Joshua.

The most interesting quotable passage is perhaps the following: "The whole congregation assembled together at Shiloh, and set up the tabernacle of the congregation there. And the land was subdued

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before them. And there remained among the children of Israel seven tribes which had not yet received their inheritance. And Joshua said unto the children of Israel, how long are ye slack to go to possess the land which the Lord God of your fathers hath given you. Give out from among you three men for each tribe, and I will send them and they shall rise and go through the land and describe it according to the inheritance of them, and they shall come again to me and they shall describe the land into seven parts and bring the description hither to me that I may cast lots for you here before the Lord our God and the men went and passed through the land and described it by cities into seven parts in a book and came again to Joshua to the host at Shiloh before the Lord, and there Joshua divided the land unto the children of Israel according to their divisions" (Josh. xviii. 1-10).

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Here was a pro rata division of the land to all the people, and not to a class as in other countries—our own vaunted England included. There were no "landed gentry " in Israel, or rather, the whole nation was a nation of landed gentry. The whole people were a territorial aristocracy, as the name Israel signified in a sense-a prince of God. They were rooted in the land.

The next feature of the land law was calculated to protect it from the disturbing effect of changing circumstances. Under ordinary conditions, a single generation suffices to remove the occupiers of land from the land they own. Misfortune overtakes a family. If they have property, the first thing they do to stem the flood is to borrow money on it to meet pressing demands. The tide not turning, they are unable to pay the interest, and the mortgagee then either enters into possession or sells the property to get his mortgage money, and the original owners lose all connection with it, and disappear in the general turgid stream of poverty that roars around.

Under the Israelitish land law, this was impossible. Each holding was an inalienable family possession. If the family got into difficulties, they could mortgage it, but not for ever; it could only remain in the hands of a stranger until the year of jubilee (every fiftieth year). The law compelled its restitution in that year without the re-payment of any money whatever (Lev. xxv. 12-13). The result of this was most wholesome: it limited the borrowing powers of the family: the only sum they could get was the value of its occupancy during the number of years that might have to run to the year of jubilee (Lev. xxv. 15-16). And it put it out of their power to permanently beggar themselves the family lands were bound to come back to them in a certain number of years. This was no injustice to the lender or

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