erness, and ought to recoil from inflicting
what they writhed under.

Now, this appeal is a master-stroke of wisdom. Much cruelty, and almost
all the cruelty of the young, springs from ignorance, and that slowness
of the imagination which cannot realise that the pains of others are
like our own. Feeling them to be so, the charities of the poor toward
one another frequently rise almost to sublimity. And thus, when
suffering does not ulcerate the heart and make it savage, it is the most
softening of all influences. In one of the most threadbare lines in the
classics, the queen of Carthage boasts that

"I, not ignorant of woe,
To pity the distressful know."

And the boldest assertion in Scripture of the natural development of our
Saviour's human powers, is that which declares that "In that He Himself
hath suffered, being tempted, He is able to succour them that are
tempted" (Heb. ii. 18).

To this principle, then, Moses appeals, and by the appeal he educates
the heart. He bids the people reflect on their own cruel hardships, on
the hateful character of their tyrants, on their own greater hatefulness
if they follow the vile example, after such bitter experience of its
character. He does not yet rise to the grand level of the New Testament
morality, Do all to thy neighbour which it is not servile and dependent
to will that he should do for thee. But he attains to the level of that
precept of Confucius and Zoroaster which has been so unworthily compared
with it: Do not unto thy neighbour what thou wouldest not that he should
do to thee--a precept which mere indifference obeys. Nay, he excels it;
for the mental and spiritual attitude of one who respects his helpless
neighbour because he so much resembles himself, will surely not be
content without relieving the griefs that have so closely touched him.
Thus again the legislation of Moses looks beyond itself.

Now, if the Jew should be merciful because he had himself known
calamity, what implicit confidence may we repose upon the Man of sorrows
and acquainted with grief?

In the same spirit they are warned against afflicting the widow or the
orphan. And the threat which is added joins hand with the exhortation
which preceded. They should not oppress the stranger, because they had
been strangers and oppressed. Now the argument advances. The same God
Who then heard their cry will hear the cry of the forlorn, and avenge
them, according to the judicial fate which He