“Ye shall not respect persons in judgment, but ye shall hear the small as well as the great; _ye shall not be afraid of the face of man_; for the judgment is God’s; and the cause that is too hard for you, bring it unto me and I will hear it.”[4] And not content with warning the judges of the danger of fearing the people, in the act of pronouncing judgment, he also warned the people of the duty of respecting the judgments of the courts, in the following wise commands: “And thou shalt come unto the Priests and Levites, and unto the Judge that shall be in those days and inquire; and they shall shew thee the sentence of judgment. And thou shalt do according to the sentence, which they of that place which the Lord shall choose, shall shew thee; and thou shalt observe to do according to all that they inform thee. According to the sentence of the law which they shall teach thee, and according to the judgment which they shall tell thee, thou shalt do; thou shalt not decline from the sentence which they shall shew thee to the right hand, nor to the left. And the man that will do presumptuously, and will not hearken unto the priest that standeth to minister there, before the Lord thy God, _or unto the Judge_, even that man shall die and thou shalt put away the evil from Israel. And all the people shall hear and fear, and do no more presumptuously.”[5] It thus appears that the ancient Israelites appreciated the virtue known as Justice and more nearly approximated the cultivated ideal existing in more recent times, for they understood, or Moses did, that it was indispensable, in the act of dispensing justice, for the incumbent of the judgment seat, to rise superior to the popular standards of justice and equality and that the due and orderly realization of the virtue could only be realized by a proper regard and respect for the judgments of the courts when they were pronounced. In this respect, the old patriarchs were in advance of the ancient Babylonians and Athenians, for while attempting the distribution of justice, through the medium of disinterested judges, they did not seem to grasp the necessity for an independent judiciary, but upon unjust grounds they permitted the recall and debasement of their wisest judges.