o the people that heed them and bring misery upon
the people that forget them.

The absence in the Mosaic books of any reference to a future life is
only intelligible by the prominence into which this truth is brought.
Nothing could have been more familiar to the Hebrews of the Exodus than
the doctrine of immortality. The continued existence of the soul, the
judgment after death, the rewards and punishments of the future state,
were the constant subjects of Egyptian thought and art. But a truth may
be hidden or thrown into the background by the intensity with which
another truth is grasped. And the truth that Moses brought so
prominently forward, the truth his gaze was concentrated upon, is a
truth that has often been thrust aside by the doctrine of immortality,
and that may perhaps, at times, react on it in the same way. This is the
truth that the actions of men bear fruit in this world, that though on
the petty scale of individual life wickedness may seem to go unpunished
and wrong to be rewarded, there is yet a Nemesis that with tireless feet
and pitiless arm follows every national crime, and smites the children
for the father's transgression; the truth that each individual must act
upon and be acted upon by the society of which he is a part; that all
must in some degree suffer for the sin of each, and the life of each be
dominated by the conditions imposed by all.

It is the intense appreciation of this truth that gives the Mosaic
institutions so practical and utilitarian a character. Their genius, if
I may so speak, leaves the abstract speculations where thought so easily
loses and wastes itself, or finds expression only in symbols that
become finally but the basis of superstition, in order that it may
concentrate attention upon laws that determine the happiness or misery
of men upon this earth. Its lessons have never tended to the essential
selfishness of asceticism, which is so prominent a feature in Brahmanism
and Buddhism, and from which Christianity and Islamism have not been
exempt. Its injunction has never been, "Leave the world to itself that
you may save your own soul," but rather, "Do your duty in the world that
you may be happier and the world be better." It has disdained no
sanitary regulation that might secure the health of the body. Its
promise has been of peace and plenty and length of days, of stalwart
sons and comely daughters.

It may be that the feeling of Moses in regard to a future life was t