Blackstone quotes this decision substituting "part" for "parcel." Lord Campbell in his "Lives of the Chief Justices" asserts the same doctrine. Legare, in his "Origin and Influence of Roman Legislation," says: "From Constantine's accession, Christianity became the jus gentium of Europe, or the basis of its jus gentium according to the definitions of the civilians themselves.”

Mr. Webster, in his famous plea in the "Girard will case," declared: "The Christian religion, in its general principles, must ever be regarded among us as the foundation of civil society." And again, in his speech on the revolution in Greece, he advances this same law: "In the production and preservation of this sense of justice, this predominating principle, the Christian religion, has acted a main part. Christianity and civilization have labored together; it seems, indeed, to be a law of our human condition that they can live and flourish only together."

In his elaborate paper before the American Social Science Association, President Anderson thus concludes: "As every civil code, in its formation and growth, adopts the moral code of the people for which it furnishes rules of government, so the common law of England and the United States has

absorbed and is still absorbing into itself the moral principles of Christianity. Hence the Christian system is the moral source of an undetermined but very large part of our common as well as of our statute law. In this sense, Christianity has contributed enormously to the common law, and also to the code of Justinian, and the legal systems of all Christendom."

In the common mention of Christianity, we are too apt to fix the bounds in the New Testament, forgetting the Old. The principles of the Bible and of Christianity are the same, although the fulfillment of the Old makes more clear what had been mysterious or partially hidden. The influence of Christian ethics upon law and government is conceded; yet, in order to a somewhat clearer understanding of the living power of the Bible, we may well place its older laws side by side with the principles upon which nations rest in this latest century of all. Were the laws of Sinai imperfect attempts at a system, or do their ethics remain substantially unamended by any new conceptions of justice? If the Levitical laws hold good in ethics there can be no doubt as to any later enactments.

We therefore turn to the practical inspection of the laws of Moses as meeting the needs of the

present time. How much are we indebted to the principles underlying his precepts? Need we be ashamed of him as our guide?

There is scarce a crime with which our courts have to deal that is not covered by his compact statutes. Let us notice the spirit breathing through them all! All hatred and revenge were expressly forbidden under the command "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." It enjoined kindness to enemies, in the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount. Restitution for all wrongs, innocently or intentionally done, was to be made. Strangers were to be treated with respect, while the poor, the widow and the fatherless were to be protected in their rights. Even animals were to be shielded from thoughtless and cruel deeds. No hired servants should be oppressed. All dealings in barter must be perfect and just. Beneficence shines in the command, "Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land." No poverty of the poor nor mightiness of the rich should sway the judgment from equity. United with the command to fear God was the respect they should pay to the aged. No lines of vengeance shone in the code of Moses. No principle of righteousness was obscured in that

Hebrew Digest. There were state penalties whose severity was measured by the exigencies of the times. All laws are necessary because of the imperfections of society; and that law alone is of use and value that is the best men can bear. That strange people, inured to a most degrading slavery, could not be controlled except by the strongest appeals to their fear. Evils like polygamy, slavery and the death penalty, were only permitted on account of their hardness of heart and ignorance. These evils had always been in the world, and in the uprooting of them, time and divine patience with the sins were great factors. To so degraded a race no appeal could equal in power the law that measured the suffering by the sin. If we judge by the customs of all other nations, nothing less than "eye for eye, life for life, tooth for tooth, wound for wound, burning for burning," would avail. Not yet has the statute of "life for life" been expunged from our own laws. The code of Solon ordained the same as did the Roman laws of the Twelve Tables. The law meant the penalty under which the innocent should be protected against the deeds of the lawless and the criminal.

With a minuteness that is marvellous, these laws were framed to exalt purity of life and conduct.

The people were commanded to report to the priest inasmuch as his functions were those of our boards of health. Swine's flesh is eaten in this cooler climate, but as a cause of that loathsome disease, the leprosy, it was there forbidden. Idolatry had its customs; its priests rounded the corners of their hair and beard; wore garments of wool and linen mixed; built their groves of worship on high places and the like; hence the commands scattered through the law to do none of these things. The law forbade the very fashions of idolatry.

Two great truths run through the Mosaic code; the unity of God, and the unity of the people. Against the first was the curse of idolatry. In all history no idolatrous nation has ever been free ; the supposition is an impossibility. The laws of Moses meant freedom, in that all men were children of one God. Upon this principle the commands relative to the Canaanites are to be interpreted. The land was defiled, and must vomit out its inhabitants. In giving this land to Israel, God expressly declares that if they shall become idolators, the land shall spew them out also. There is not a nation but would enforce a like martial law to preserve its own life.