islation from that of other founders of states. His laws rested on no
basis of mere temporal expediency, but on the two pivots of an absolute
Divine will and a deliberate national choice. It had the double sanction
of religion and justice; it was at once a revelation and a contract. There
was a third idea which it was the object of his whole system, and
especially of his ceremonial system, to teach and to cultivate,--that of
holiness. God is a holy God, his law is a holy law, the place of his
worship is a holy place, and the Jewish nation as his worshippers are a
holy people. This belief appears in the first revelation which he received
at the burning bush in the land of Midian. It explains many things in the
Levitical law, which without this would seem trivial and unmeaning. The
ceremonial purifications, clean and unclean meats, the arrangements of the
tabernacle, with its holy place, and its Holy of Holies, the Sabbath, the
dresses of the priests, the ointment with which the altar was anointed,
are all intended to develop in the minds of the people the idea of
holiness.[354] And there never was a people on whose souls this notion was
so fully impressed as it was upon the Jews. Examined, it means the eternal
distinction between right and wrong, between good and evil, and the
essential hostility which exists between them. Applied to God, it shows
him to have a nature essentially moral, and a true moral character. He
loves good and hates evil. He does not regard them with exactly the same
feeling. He cannot treat the good man and the bad man in exactly the same
way. More than monotheism, this perhaps is the characteristic of the
theology of Moses.

The character of Moses had very marked deficiencies, it had its weakness
as well as its strength. He was impetuous, impatient, wanting in
self-possession and self-control. There is a verse in the Book of Numbers
(believed by Eichhorn and Eosenmuller to be an interpolation) which calls
him the meekest of men. Such a view of his character is not confirmed by
such actions as his killing the Egyptian, his breaking the stone tables,
and the like. He declares of himself that he had no power as a speaker,
being deficient probably in the organ of language. His military skill
seems small, since he appointed Joshua for the military commander, when
the people were attacked by the Amalekites. Nor did he have, what seems
more important in a legislator, the practical tact of organizing the
a