Now we understand what it is that the Lord demands; so did Saul, after Samuel had explained it to him, for "Samuel hewed Agag (the king whose life had been spared) in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal." From a human point of view, it would have been more moral to sacrifice to God the cattle Saul had saved than to "hew in pieces" a human being, but that is the morality of man; to be moral in the bible sense is to do as God commands, whether what he commands you to kill be a sheep or a human being. Morality, according to the bible, means unquestioning obedience. Addressing a monster revival meeting, the Christian preacher declared that: "Violation of the sixth commandment, cursing, theft, drunkenness, and even murder, are pardonable sins, but refusal to accept the Son of God is an eternal barrier to the heavenly kingdom." * * The Toledo News-Bee, May 17, 1911. That is our definition of immorality. V. The Ten Commandments |IT is the claim of both Jews and Christians that the Ten Commandments form the foundation, not only for the moral and civil laws of our country, but of the civilized world as well. Some bibliolaters, in their zeal, go so far as to say that there was no morality in the world before the Ten Commandments were announced. That is to say, in their opinion, morality is but a few thousand years old. Why, the world itself, according to the bible chronology, is nearly six thousand years old. Are we to understand, then, that until the time of Moses the world managed to get along without any morality at all? But we know that the world is very much older than six thousand years, and that there were great empires and a civilization which was already old, long long before the Jews arrived. Egypt was at the zenith of her culture when the sons of Jacob appeared within her gates to beg for bread, and Babylonia and Persia were world-empires when the Jews were still slaves. But to admit that there was any morality before Moses, is to give up the bible. What need could there be of a moral law coming down from heaven, if there were one already growing out of the earth? No deity is needed to find for us what was never lost, or to give us what we already possessed. To admit, therefore, that there were ancient nations who flourished and waxed strong in art and commerce, in culture and character, long before the Ten Commandments descended from the clouds, would be fatal to the claim that there can be no morality without the bible.