ited to
promote their highest good, and to secure them forever in their
freedom and national independence.

The great basal principles of law are found in concrete form.

Human life is sacred as we find from the explicit laws for its
protection. The owner of an ox was made responsible for the life taken
by "an ox that was known to push with its horns."

A battlement or balustrade was required on the houses, very like our
laws requiring fire escapes. The principle is the same.

The laws forbidding marriage within certain degrees of kinship have
been copied into the laws of every civilized people. The laws for the
preservation of social purity have never been surpassed.

The rights of property were sacred. Each had a right to his own. Theft
was severely punished. "If a thief be found breaking up, and be
smitten that he die, there shall no blood be shed for him."

Each must assist in the protection of the property of others; even the
enemy's property must be protected. "If thou meet thine enemy's ox or
his ass going astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to him again."

The laws for the relief of the poor were kinder and more encouraging
to self-help and self-reliance than our modern poorhouses. Deut.
15:7-11: "If there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren
within any of thy gates in thy land which the Lord thy God giveth
thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy
poor brother; but thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him, and shalt
surely lend him sufficient for his need, in that which he wanteth.
Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart, saying, The
seventh year, the year of release, is at hand; and thine eye be evil
against thy poor brother, and thou givest him naught, and he cry unto
the Lord against thee, and it be sin unto thee. Thou shalt surely give
him, and thine heart shall not be grieved when thou givest unto him:
because that for this thing the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all
thy works, and in all that thou puttest thine hand unto. For the poor
shall never cease out of the land; therefore I command thee, saying,
Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to
thy needy, in thy land."

These divinely given laws never wrought injustice. They protected
life, purity and property, and required mutual helpfulness. They were
given by the divine mind, in infinite love, to promote the highest
good of this chosen people.

These laws