And now, God calls up Moses _out_ of his miserable oppression into the summit of Sinai, and appoints him the head of the second august human epoch. A period of laws, after instinct, begins. Instinct must be curbed, for it has done mischief enough. Impulse must be subjected to principle, for it has proved itself insufficient alone. There must be positive command, controlling wayward inclinations. “Thou shalt,” and “Thou shalt not,” are the watchwords. It is an age of obedience. Ceremonies and ordinances are set up to bring the wild will under discipline. And the better to secure exact obedience, a visible system of formal observances is announced—so many sacrifices every day, and so many meat-offerings, drink-offerings, cattle, doves, fruits, cakes, for every sacrifice. To withstand the surrounding seductions of nations still steeped in the vices of their natural propensities, a scheme of coercive restraints comes in. The people must have multiplied festivals, jubilees, national gatherings, regularly kept, and by divine appointment. To draw them, there is a gorgeous temple with an imposing altar, a tabernacle, a covenant, a shekinah lighted from heaven, a priesthood clad in the splendid garments, and all the superb apparatus of a magnificent ritual. Even the daily habits, materials of common dress, qualities of food and kinds of flesh, are all to be regulated in detail by specific statutes. Law reaches down to determine the most minute particulars—the cleansing of houses, the shape of the beard, the sowing of the field—all having reference to neighboring idolatrous usages, of which these twelve tribes must, by all means, be kept clear. And for the breach of every law, from greatest to least, there must be penalty. That part of human nature, that terror and dread appeal to, is addressed. On the transgressor woe is denounced. There is a Mount Ebal, full of menacing curses, as well as a Gerizim pledged to blessings. Smoke, earthquakes, thunders and lightnings, marshaling their awful pageant about Sinai when the law was given, only prefigured punishments that should always torment the disobedient. And, accordingly, down through all the Hebrew fortunes, while prophets were set to admonish and call back the rebellious, the great staple of Israelitish history was, the divine chastisement that followed violations of law, and the prosperity that rewarded its observance. Sieges and campaigns, conquests and captivities, judges and kings, Joshua, Gideon, and Ezra, David, Saul, and Rehoboam—all were of less consequence, as events, or as individuals, than as instruments of that mighty, organized power _lying behind them—Moses and the law_.