ur world and our
race,--whether as chronicle or as symbolic poem,--its central theme and
thought, the direct creative agency of Jehovah, which it was his
privilege to announce, stands forth clear and unmistakable. Yet if we
deny the supernaturalism of the code, we may also deny the
supernaturalism of the creation, in so far as both rest on the
authority of Moses.

And, further, if Moses was not inspired directly from God to write his
code, then it follows that he--a man pre-eminent for wisdom, piety, and
knowledge--was an impostor, or at least, like Mohammed and George Fox, a
self-deceived and visionary man, since he himself affirms his divine
legation, and traces to the direct agency of Jehovah not merely his
code, but even the various deliverances of the Israelites. And not only
was Moses mistaken, but the Jewish nation, and Christ and the apostles,
and the greatest lights of the Church from Augustine to Bossuet.

Hence it follows necessarily that all the miracles by which the divine
legation of Moses is supported and credited, have no firm foundation,
and a belief in them is superstitious,--as indeed it is in all other
miracles recorded in the Scriptures, since they rest on testimony no
more firmly believed than that believed by Christ and the apostles
respecting Moses. Sweep away his authority as an inspiration, and you
undermine the whole authority of the Bible; you bring it down to the
level of all other books; you make it valuable only as a thesaurus of
interesting stories and impressive moral truths, which we accept as we
do all other kinds of knowledge, leaving us free to reject what we
cannot understand or appreciate, or even what we dislike.

Then what follows? Is it not the rejection of many of the most precious
revelations of the Bible, to which we _wish_ to cling, and without a
belief in which there would be the old despair of Paganism, the dreary
unsettlement of all religious opinions, even a disbelief in an
intelligent First Cause of the universe, certainly of a personal
God,--and thus a gradual drifting away to the dismal shores of that
godless Epicureanism which Socrates derided, and Paul and Augustine
combated? Do you ask for a confirmation of the truths thus deduced from
the denial of the supernaturalism of the Mosaic Code? I ask you to look
around. I call no names; I invoke no theological hatreds; I seek to
inflame no prejudices. I appeal to facts as incontrovertible as the
phenomena of the heave