But municipal codes have always required, and must, from their very nature and purpose require, immediate rewards and punishments. This is common to them all. Moses, as a legislator, had little, or no, concern with anything else. His code, however, required them in a somewhat greater degree than others, because it was to be applied to a singularly rude and intractable people; and where the code is in advance of the general manners and sentiments of a people, as was his, speediness and severity of punishment are needed especially. So would it have been with his code had it been merely as others are. On that supposition he would probably, just as other legislators have done, and for the same reasons, have abstained from putting forward the sanction of future rewards and punishments. As far as his business and object were concerned, they would have introduced considerations which, while they were irrelevant, would also have been confusing; and must have weakened the appropriate sanction of his law, which was so essentially his main reliance, that he could not afford to risk its being at all weakened. Indeed, we see that it was a great object in the code to intensify the sense of the severity, and of the speediness of its punishments. So it would have been, if the code he delivered had been as other codes. On that supposition, he would, probably, have confined himself to the rewards and punishments of this world. There was, however, one supreme peculiarity which distinguished his from all the municipal codes of civil and criminal law people in this part of the world have ever had to do with; that was that it came direct from God. And it came in such a manner and sense, that it required that God should see, more or less immediately, to its execution. It was His law in such a sense that He must be its executor. This meant that God did actually superintend the distribution of the rewards and punishments it required. This was a structural necessity. At all events it was recognized as such, and was logically carried out in the system.