The assumption that Moses was the author, under divine guidance, of what is commonly called the _Ten Commandments,_ about one thousand four hundred and fifty-one years before the Christian era, is _assumption_ only, without a particle of proof to sustain it. What are commonly called the laws of Moses were written by some person or persons unknown in the fifth or sixth centuries before the beginning of Christianity. Most of the matter of what is called the Pentateuch was borrowed from older and wiser nations—the Egyptians, the Hindoos, the Greeks, etc. But for the unbounded credulity on this subject it would seem like an insult seriously to discuss the question, Which are the older writings? and, Which the substantial copies? Unless a man is ready to take assumptions for demonstrated facts, to ignore the museums and libraries, to question the conclusions of the profound-est antiquarians, and to make the stream of history flow backward, he must admit that the Hebrews were the borrowers.(1) (1) The substance of this chapter was published in March, 1890, in _An Open Letter_ to Hon. Edward M. Paxson, Chief-Justice of Pennsylvania, who had affirmed in a lecture before the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania that the “law of Sinai was the first of which we have any knowledge,” and that “Moses was the greatest statesman and lawgiver the world has ever produced.” CHAPTER V. ANCIENT SYMBOLISM AND MODERN LITERALISM _“Which things are an allegory.”—Gal. 4:24._ WORSHIP is natural to man, and all systems of religion, many think, received their cult from Nature-worship. Typology, mythology, theology followed each other as the links of a well-forged chain.