The Divine Origin of the Moral Law
bor are then classified by the moral law. They are divided into offenses against life, chastity, property, and character. And,” said he, applying a legal idea with legal acuteness, “I notice that the greatest offense in each class is expressly forbidden. Thus, the greatest injury to life is murder; to chastity, adultery; to property, theft; to character, perjury. Now the greatest offense must include the less of the same kind. Murder must include every injury to life; adultery, every injury to purity; and so of the rest. And the moral code is closed and perfected by a command forbidding every improper desire in regard to our neighbor. “I have been thinking,” he proceeded, “where did Moses get that law? I have read history: the Egyptians and the adjacent nations were idolaters; so were the Greeks and Romans; and the wisest and best Greeks or Romans never gave a code of morals like this. Where did Moses get this law, which surpasses the wisdom and philosophy of the most enlightened ages? He lived at a period comparatively barbarous; but he has given a law, in which the learning and sagacity of all subsequent time can detect no flaw. Where did he get it? He could not have soared so far above his age, as to have devised it himself. I am satisfied where he obtained it. It came down from Heaven. I am convinced of the truth of the religion of the Bible.”