However much we might desire to think the contrary, we are driven to the belief that the moral precepts inculcated on the Jews, the Buddhists, and the Christians, had a human, and, we may add, a political origin. Taking the Bible even as being what many believe it to be--the inspired word of God--we must nevertheless allow that such a code as that book contains in Exodus and elsewhere, existed in Egypt long before the departure of the Jews from that country. Had not murder been prohibited on the Nile bank, Moses would not have run away to escape the penalty for homicide. Because the Mizraim punished killing, were they taught of God? The natural answer to this query when it is addressed to a bibliolater is that the Egyptians were taught by God to punish murder with death through the intervention of their forefather, Ham, who heard the command given by God to Noah, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed," Gen. ix. 6. But if the Egyptians thus knew the law, so the descendants of Shem must have learned it also; and if so, what need was there to repeat it amongst the thunders of Sinai. It is plain from the romantic legend of Joseph and Potiphar's wife: first, that the Hebrew slave feared to commit adultery, as it was a great wickedness and a sin against God, Gen. xxxix. 9; and, secondly, that the Egyptian considered it a crime in anyone to violate the wife of another. But neither Joseph nor Potiphar could by any possibility have heard of the laws enunciated on Sinai. So, if we could inquire farther, we should most assuredly learn that the Mizraim venerated their parents, punished theft, and took means to prevent and to punish perjury. If, then, the Egyptians had, long before they ever heard of a Jew, the same commandments amongst them which were subsequently enunciated in the wilderness, we can only come to the conclusion that the Hebrew writer who told the story of Sinai, gave the god whom he described, a great deal of unnecessary work. Can we for a moment suppose that the Jews when in Egypt had their wives in common?--and if each man had his mate, and each woman her husband, it is almost self-evident that adultery would not be tolerated amongst them. As there were therefore distinct moral laws long before the Exodus, the decalogue was entirely superfluous.