ther) the chief
priest could only be He Who represents and embodies all humanity, in
Whom is neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free,
because He is all and in all.

In the meantime, here is recognised, in the history of Israel, a Gentile
priesthood.

And, as at the passover, so now, the sacrifice to God is partaken of by
His people, who are conscious of acceptance by Him. Happy was the union
of innocent festivity with a sacramental recognition of God. It is the
same sentiment which was aimed at by the primitive Christian Church in
her feasts of love, genuine meals in the house of God, until licence and
appetite spoiled them, and the apostle asked "Have ye not houses to eat
and drink in?" (1 Cor. xi. 22). Shall there never come a time when the
victorious and pure Church of the latter days shall regain what we have
forfeited, when the doctrine of the consecration of what is called
"secular life" shall be embodied again in forms like these? It speaks to
us meanwhile in a form which is easily ridiculed (as in Lamb's
well-known essay), and yet singularly touching and edifying if rightly
considered, in the asking for a blessing upon our meals.

On the morrow, Jethro saw Moses, all day long, deciding the small
matters and great which needed already to be adjudicated for the nation.
He who had striven, without a commission, himself to smite the Egyptian
and lead out Israel, is the same self-reliant, heroic, not too discreet
person still.

But the true statesman and administrator is he who employs to the utmost
all the capabilities and energies of his subordinates. And Jethro made a
deep mark in history when he taught Moses the distinction between the
lawgiver and the judge, between him who sought from God and proclaimed
to the people the principles of justice and their form, and him who
applied the law to each problem as it arose.

"It is supposed, and with probability," writes Kalisch (_in loco_),
"that Alfred the Great, who was well versed in the Bible, based his own
Saxon constitution of sheriffs in counties, etc., on the example of the
Mosaic division (comp. _Bacon on English Government_, i. 70)." And thus
it may be that our own nation owes its free institutions almost directly
to the generous interest in the well-being of his relative, felt by an
Arabian priest, who cherished, amid the growth of idolatries all around
him, the primitive belief in God, and who rightly held that the first
qualification