But, furthermore, it is evident that law, civil and criminal, must be executed here in this life. This is a concern of existing human societies that must be attended to. The more instantaneously punishment overtakes the offender the better. The more completely, then, will the very object of the law be carried out, that which is the whole of its _raison d’être_. It always has been so all over the world. To be effective, to answer its purpose, to do what it aims at doing, its action must be certain, speedy, visible. Punishment has two political objects, to rid society of those who are disturbing it, and to strike terror into, and so deter, those who might be disposed to disturb it. The object of law, therefore, can not be attained without present, immediate punishment. The more immediate the better. It has been so everywhere, and always. Moses’s law, therefore, required the sanction of direct, immediate, mundane rewards and punishments, just like any other code. We see, then, at once, that there was no absolute need for future rewards and punishments. We can even already imagine that they would have had a weakening and disturbing effect upon the system: at all events, we shall eventually find that they were, precisely, as a matter of fact and history, the very solvent that was used, designedly, for the very purpose of disintegrating and destroying it. As it was a system of statute law, what was needed was that the offender should be punished here at once. Moses had no concern with the world to come, or with the unseen world at all, excepting so far as it could further his great object. No code of civil and criminal law, that ever was heard of, could be maintained, if it relegated the punishment of the offender to a future life. And, furthermore, as God was the primary giver of the law, and the actual source of it, so must He be the actual executor of it: it was His own law. This was intelligible, and logical. And furthermore, it was in perfect harmony both with the physics and the metaphysics of those ages, among the learned and the unlearned alike. To their apprehension everything good in nature, in society, and the mind of man, came direct from God. God’s arm, therefore, was ever bared, and visible. Every offence had its penalty, whether the offence of an individual, or of the nation; and that penalty was visibly exacted at the time, that is to say, in this life. The idea of future rewards and punishments would have been antagonistic to this. It would have been an element of confusion and weakness. There was no place for it. It was practically and logically and philosophically excluded. The one thing that was paramount, and indispensable, was thoroughly attended to. What would have acted injuriously on that imperious necessity was set aside.