by making them the ultimate
source of authority, next to the authority of God. He instituted
legislative assemblies to discuss peace and war, and elect the great
officers of state. While he made the Church support the State, and the
State the Church, yet he separated civil power from the religious, as
Calvin did at Geneva. The functions of the priest and the functions of
the magistrate were made forever distinct,--a radical change from the
polity of Egypt, where kings were priests, and priests were civil rulers
as well as a literary class; a predominating power to whom all vital
interests were intrusted. The kingly power among the Jews was checked
and hedged by other powers, so that an overgrown tyranny was difficult
and unusual. But above all kingly and priestly power was the power of
the Invisible King, to whom the judges and monarchs and supreme
magistrates were responsible, as simply His delegates and vicegerents.
Upon Him alone the Jews were to rely in all crises of danger; in Him
alone was help. And it is remarkable that whenever Jewish rulers relied
on chariots and horses and foreign allies, they were delivered into the
hands of their enemies. It was only when they fell back upon the
protecting arms of their Eternal Lord that they were rescued and saved.
The mightiest monarch ruled only with delegated powers from Him; and it
was the memorable loyalty of David to his King which kept him on the
throne, as it was self-reliance--the exhibition of independent
power--which caused the sceptre to depart from Saul.

I cannot dwell on the humanity and wisdom which marked the social
economy of the Jews, as given by Moses,--in the treatment of slaves
(emancipated every fifty years), in the sanctity of human life, in the
liberation of debtors every seven years, in kindness to the poor (who
were allowed to glean the fields), in the education of the people, in
the division of inherited property, in the inalienation of paternal
inheritances, in the discouragement of all luxury and extravagance, in
those regulations which made disproportionate fortunes difficult, the
vast accumulation of which was one of the main causes of the decline of
the Roman Empire, and is now one of the most threatening evils of modern
civilization. All the civil and social laws of the Jewish commonwealth
tended to the elevation of woman and the cultivation of domestic life.
What virtues were gradually developed among those sensual slaves whom
Moses led th