ourselves, that such a morally and intellectually inferior nation of people were the chosen instruments in the hands of God to communicate the revelation of his will to the human family. We are under no moral obligation to believe it. A revelation from a pure, perfect, and holy God must (if we assume a revelation necessary) come through a pure and holy channel: otherwise it would be contaminated and corrupted before it reached us. If God could consent to communicate a revelation to the human race through such a channel as the Jewish nation furnished, we see not how he could escape a stigma upon his character for stooping to such ignoble means. And would not the act of familiarizing himself with such a people show that he kept bad company, and furnish a bad ex-ample to us who are enjoined to be "perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect"? CHAPTER XXVIII.--CHARACTER OF MOSES; MORAL DEFECTS OF. The history of Moses is so intimately and thoroughly inter-blended with that of the Jews, that, to present the character of one, is to present the character of the other. We shall therefore devote but a brief chapter to a special exposition of his character, as it will be found fully set forth in the history of the Jews, and the practical illustration of their moral character. No religious chieftain ever claimed to be on more intimate terms with God, and no writer ever presented a more dishonorable exhibition of his character. He made God the author of nearly every thing he said and did, no matter how wicked, how cruel, how demoralizing, or how shocking to decency or refined moral sensibilities. If some of his characteristics of God are not blasphemous, we can have but little use for the word. Some of his laws serve as an illustration of this statement. He says, "The Lord spake unto Moses," and told him that no person with a flat nose or crooked back or broken hand, a crooked eye, or who was lame or possessing any kind of a physical blemish, should be admitted into the congregation of the Lord (Lev. xxi.) This was punishing the unfortunate for defects they could not help, thus aggravating the misfortunes of a class who, above all others, had special claims upon his kindness on account of the very defects for which they were excluded. These laws, and many others no better, sufficiently illustrate the character of the man. His penal code, which inflicted death for two hundred acts, many of them no crime at all (such as picking up sticks on the sabbath to make a fire to cook their food with), furnishes conclusive evidence that he was a cruel and unmerciful lawgiver. And the fact that he was almost constantly engaged in a bloody warfare with neighboring nations, with the avowed determination to exterminate them, and "leave nothing alive that breathes," simply because they preferred to worship some other God than the cruel Jehovah, leads to the conclusion that he was a bloody-minded warrior. Had Christ lived under the Hebrew monarchy,