est the
clothes of the priest should be disturbed and his limbs uncovered.
Already we feel that we have to reckon with the temper as well as the
letter of the precept. It is divinely unlike the frantic indecencies of
many pagan rituals. It protests against all infractions of propriety,
even the slightest, such as even now discredit many a zealous movement,
and bear fruit in many a scandal. It rebukes all misdemeanour, all
forgetfulness in look and gesture of the Sacred Presence, in every
worshipper, at every shrine.

FOOTNOTES:

[35] Prof. Tyndall, _Belfast Address_, p. 60. What progress has
scientific unbelief made since 1874 in solving this "question of
questions for the present hour"? It has perfected the phonograph, but it
has not devised a creed.

[36] "Or _beside Me_" (R.V.) The preposition is so vague that either of
our English words may suggest quite too definite a meaning, as when
"before Me" is made to mean "in My angry eyes," or "beside Me" is taken
to hint at resentment for intrusion upon the same throne.

[37] Gury, Compend., i., secs. 607, 623.

CHAPTER XXI.

_THE LESSER LAW (continued)._

PART II.--RIGHTS OF THE PERSON.

xxi. 1-32.

The first words of God from Sinai had declared that He was Jehovah Who
brought them out of slavery. And in this remarkable code, the first
person whose rights are dealt with is the slave. We saw that a
denunciation of all slavery would have been premature, and therefore
unwise; but assuredly the germs of emancipation were already planted by
this giving of the foremost place to the rights of the least of all and
the servant of all.

As regards the Hebrew slave, the effect was to reduce his utmost bondage
to a comparatively mild apprenticeship. At the worst he should go free
in the seventh year; and if the year of jubilee intervened, it brought a
still speedier emancipation. If his debt or misconduct had involved a
family in his disgrace, they should also share his emancipation, but if
while in bondage his master had provided for his marriage with a slave,
then his family must await their own appointed period of release. It
followed that if he had contracted a degrading alliance with a foreign
slave, his freedom would inflict upon him the pang of final severance
from his dear ones. He might, indeed, escape this pain, but only by a
deliberate and humiliating act, by formally renouncing before the judges
his liberty, the birthright of his nation ("they are