Thus the law regulated the whole life of an Israelite. His house, his dress, and his food, his domestic arrange- ments and the distribution of his property, all were de- termined. In the laws of the release of debts and the prohibition of usury, the dictates of self-interest and the natural course of commercial transactions are sternly checked. His actions were rewarded and punished with great minuteness and strictness, and that according to the standard, not of their consequences, but of their in- trinsic morality, so that, for example, fornication and adultery were as severely visited as theft or murder. His religious worship was defined and enforced in an elaborate and unceasing ceremonial. In all things it is clear that, if men submitted to it merely as a law, im- posed under penalties by an irresistible authority, and did not regard it as a means to the knowledge and love of God, and a preparation for his redemption, it would well deserve from Israelites the description given of it by St. Peter (Acts xv, 10) as " a yoke which neither they nor their fathers were able to bear."
(3.) The penalties and 7-ewards by which the law is enforced are such as depend on the direct theocracy. With regard to individual actions, it may be noticed that, as generally some penalties are inflicted by the subordinate, and some only by the supreme authority, so among the Israelites some penalties came from the hand of man, some directly from the providence of God. So much is this the case, that it often seems doubtful whether the threat that a " soul shall be cut off from Israel" refers to outlawrj"^ and excommunication, or to such miraculous punishments as those of Nadab and Abihu, or Korah, Dathan, and Abirani. In dealing with the nation at large, Moses, regularly and as a matter of course, refers for punishments and rewards to the provi- dence of God. This is seen not only in the great bless- ing and curse which enforces the law as a whole, but also in special instances, as, for example, in the promise of unusual fertility to compensate for the sabbatical year, and of safety of the countrv from attack when left v.— T '
undefended at the three great festivals. Whether these were to come from natural causes, i. e. laws of his prov- idence, which we can understand and foresee, or from causes supernatural, i. e. incomprehensible and inscruta- ble to us, is not in any case laid down, nor indeed does it affect this principle of the law.
(4.) The bearing of this principle on the inquiry as to the revelation of a future life, in the Pentateuch, is easily seen. So far as the law deals with the nation as a whole, it is obvious that its penalties and rewards could only refer to this life, in which alone the nation exists. So far as it relates to such individual acts as are gener- ally cognizable by human law, and capable of temporal punishments, no one would expect that its divine origin should necessitate any reference to the world to come. But the sphere of moral and religious action and thought to which it extends is beyond the cognizance of human laws and the scope of their ordinary penalties, and is therefore left by them to the retribution of God's inscru- table justice, which, being but imperfectly seen here, is contemplated especially as exercised in a future state. Hence arises the expectation of a direct revelation of this future state in the Mosaic law. Such a revelation is certainly not given. Warburton (in his Divine Le- gation of Moses) even builds on its non-existence an ar- gument for the supernatural power and commission of the lawgiver, who could promise and threaten retribu- tion from the providence of God in this life, and submit his predictions to the test of actual experience. The truth seems to be that, in a law which appeals directly to God himself for its authority and its sanction, there cannot be that broad line of demarcation between this life and the next which is drawn lor those whose power is limited by the grave. Our Lord has taught us (jMatt. xxii, 31,32) that in the very revelation of God, as the " God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob," the promise of immortality and future retribution was implicitly con- tained. We may apply this declaration even more strongly to a law in which God was revealed as enter- ing into covenant with Israel, and in them drawing mankind directly under his immediate government. His blessings and curses, by the very fact that they came from him, would be felt to be milimited by time^ and the plain and immediate fulfilment which they found in this life would be accepted as an earnest of a. deeper, though more mysterious completion in the world to come. But the time for the clear revelation of thi& truth had not yet come, and therefore, while the future- life and its retribution is implied, yet the rewards and penalties of the present life are those which are plainly held out and practically dwelt upon.
(5.) But perhaps the most important consequence of the theocratic nature of the law was the jieculiar char- acter offjoodness which it sought to impress on the peo- ple. Goodness in its relation to man takes the forms of righteousness and love ; in its independence of aU rela- tion, the form of purity ; and in its relation to God, that of piet3\ Laws which contemplate men chiefly in their mutual relations endeavor to enforce or protect in thera the first two qualities; the Mosaic law, beginning with piety as its first object, enforces most emphatically the purity essential to those who, by their union with God,, have recovered the hope of intrinsic goodness, while it views righteousness and love rather as deductions from these than as independent objects. Not that it neglects these qualities; on the contrary, it is full of precepts which show a high conception and tender care of our relative duties to man (see, for example, Exod.xxi,7-ll, 28-36; xxiii, 1-9; Dcut. xxii, 1-4; xxiv, 10-22, etc.) ; but these can hardly be called its distinguishing feat- ures. It is most instructive to refer to the religious preface of the law in Deut. vi-xi (especially to vi, 4-13), where all is based on the first great commandment, and to observe the subordinate and dependent character of " the second that is like unto it" — '*• Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thj'self ; / am the Lord" (Lev. xix, 18). On the contrary', the care for the purity of the people stands-