is admitted by the severest critics;
and it is a wonderful example of spirituality and searching depth, and
also of such germinal and fruitful principles as cannot rest in
themselves, literally applied, but must lead the obedient student on to
still better things.

It is not the function of law to inspire men to obey it; this is
precisely what the law could not do, being weak through the flesh. But
it could arrest the attention and educate the conscience. Simple though
it was in the letter, David could meditate upon it day and night. In the
New Testament we know of two persons who had scrupulously respected its
precepts, but they both, far from being satisfied, were filled with a
divine discontent. One had kept all these things from his youth, yet
felt the need of doing some good thing, and anxiously demanded what it
was that he lacked yet. The other, as touching the righteousness of the
law, was blameless, yet when the law entered, sin revived and slew him.
For the law was spiritual, and reached beyond itself, while he was
carnal, and thwarted by the flesh, sold under sin, even while externally
beyond reproach.

This subtle characteristic of all noble law will be very apparent in
studying the kernel of the law, the code within the code, which now lies
before us.

Men sometimes judge the Hebrew legislation harshly, thinking that they
are testing it, as a Divine institution, by the light of this century.
They are really doing nothing of the sort. If there are two principles
of legislation dearer than all others to modern Englishmen, they are the
two which these flippant judgments most ignore, and by which they are
most perfectly refuted.

One is that institutions educate communities. It is not too much to say
that we have staked the future of our nation, and therefore the hopes of
humanity, upon our conviction that men can be elevated by ennobling
institutions,--that the franchise, for example, is an education as well
as a trust.

The other, which seems to contradict the first, and does actually modify
it, is that legislation must not move too far in advance of public
opinion. Laws may be highly desirable in the abstract, for which
communities are not yet ripe. A constitution like our own would be
simply ruinous in Hindostan. Many good friends of temperance are the
reluctant opponents of legislation which they desire in theory but which
would only be trampled upon in practice, because public opinion would
rebel a