kes all the promise that
remains secure. As one who feels his pardon will surely not despair of
heaven, so Moses twice over instructs the people what to do when God
shall have kept the oath which He swore, and brought them into Canaan,
into the land flowing with milk and honey. Then they must observe His
passover. Then they must consecrate their firstborn.

And twice over this emancipator and lawgiver, in the first flush of his
success, impresses upon them the homely duty of teaching their
households what God had done for them (vers. 8, 14; cf. xii. 26).

This, accordingly, the Psalmist learned, and in his turn transmitted. He
heard with his ears and his fathers told him what God did in their days,
in the days of old. And he told the generation to come the praises of
Jehovah, and His strength, and His wondrous works (Ps. xliv. 1, lxxviii.
4).

But it is absurd to treat these verses, as Kuenen does, as evidence that
the story is mere legend: "transmitted from mouth to mouth, it gradually
lost its accuracy and precision, and adopted all sorts of foreign
elements." To prove which, we are gravely referred to passages like
this. (_Religion of Israel_, i. 22, Eng. Vers.) The duty of oral
instruction is still acknowledged, but this does not prove that the
narrative is still unwritten.

From the emphatic language in which Moses urged this double duty, too
much forgotten still, of remembering and showing forth the goodness of
God, sprang the curious custom of the wearing of phylacteries. But the
Jews were not bidden to wear signs and frontlets: they were bidden to
let hallowed memories be unto them in the place of such charms as they
had seen the Egyptians wear, "for a sign unto thee, upon thine hand, and
for a frontlet between thine eyes, that the law of the Lord may be in
thy mouth" (ver. 9). Such language is frequent in the Old Testament,
where mercy and truth should be bound around their necks; their fathers'
commandments should be tied around their necks, bound on their fingers,
written on their hearts; and Sion should clothe herself with her
converts as an ornament, and gird them upon her as a bride doth (Prov.
iii. 3, vi. 21, vii. 3; Isa. xlix. 18).

But human nature still finds the letter of many a commandment easier
than the spirit, a ceremony than an obedient heart, penance than
penitence, ashes on the forehead than a contrite spirit, and a
phylactery than the gratitude and acknowledgment which ought to be unto
u