Moses' laws would have put him to death; and yet they both claimed to derive their moral code from the same God, the Jewish Jehovah. A circumstance is related of Moses killing an Egyptian, and hiding him in the sand. And it is stated, "He looked this way and that way" before committing the deed, and then concealed the dead body. This implies that he felt guilty, and that it was an act of murder in the first degree. Although every chapter of Moses' history proves him to have been a cruel and bloody-minded barbarian, with a moral code possessing but a slight exhibition of the elements of mercy, humanity, and justice, yet Dr. Gaussel, in his "Theopneustia," calls him "a holy and divine man," and says, "He was such a prophet, that his holy books were placed above all the rest of the Old Testament." The doctor furnishes us one of the many cases of the blinding and biasing effect of a perverted religious education, and an argument in favor of laboring to supersede Bible religion with something better. Here we will notice it as a curious circumstance, that, after Jehovah had occupied but six days in creating eighty-five millions of worlds, and made most of them in a few hours, it should have taken him and Moses both forty days to write a law, and a very imperfect one at that. And then it would seem it took Jehovah three thousand years to make a devil, as his Satanic Majesty does not figure in the Jewish hierarchy till after the lapse of that period. One of the most conspicuous traits in Moses' mental composition was an unbounded self-esteem. Although he claimed to be in constant consultation with Jehovah, he seldom yielded to his advice when it conflicted with his own judgment. On the contrary, he several times detected his God in error, and admonished him, and entered into an argument to convince him that he was wrong; and, of course, he always came out first best in the logical contest. Take, for example, the case of Aaron making the golden calf. It occurred while he and Jehovah were engaged in writing "the holy law" on Mount Sinai. When the case became known to Jehovah, it so disturbed and aggravated him, that he at once declared he would not only punish the guilty sinner,--the apostate Aaron,--but would exterminate the whole race. But the better tempered and more considerate Moses began to reason and remonstrate against such a rash act. He appealed to his honor and love of approbation, and told him the Egyptians would report that he was not able to get his "holy people" to the promised land, and hence killed them to conceal the failure. "Oh, yes, Moses, you are right! I never thought of that," was the seeming reply of Jehovah. And thus Moses proved to be smarter than his God, and enlightened his ignorance.