The moral power of this invisible force upon the heart and conscience of the people we shall be able to appreciate more justly if we carefully study the words which stand (Ex. 23: 20–25), _i. e._ at the close of the first catalogue of the “statutes and judgments.” It seems to come in here legitimately as a moral force to induce a conscientious and careful obedience to these statutes. “Behold” (calling special attention) “behold, I send an angel before thee to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Beware of him, and obey his voice; provoke him not, for he will not pardon your transgressions, for my name is in him. But if thou shalt indeed obey his voice and do all that I speak, then I will be an enemy to thine enemies,” etc.――――This angel, bearing authority to pardon or not pardon sins, and of whom the very God could say――“My name is in him” could be no less than really divine. _Name_ in Hebrew usage as applied to God involves and implies his real nature――his essential attributes. Corresponding to this view of “the angel” in this passage is the injunction to “beware of him and to obey his voice”; and also his power to forgive sins――“for who can forgive sins but God only”? This passage therefore affords decisive proof that the personage who manifested himself to Israel in the pillar of cloud and of fire; whose presence abode in their tabernacle; whose voice they heard in this holy law――was truly divine, and yet was mysteriously distinct from the speaker――the “I”――of this remarkable passage. Truly he was God, manifest――if not precisely in human flesh――yet in palpable forms, in tangible demonstrations, in voice of power and tongue of flame; in the luminous pillar; in perpetual agencies of protection and of supply as to earthly need; and, not least, as their Ruler and their Lord whose voice in these statutes it behooved them to hear and obey as they would hope to be blessed in their national life and in any desirable prosperity. Hence it was both practicable and wise under this Hebrew system to leave some statutes upon the naked conscience of the people with no attempt to enforce obedience save the appeal to this invisible Presence. These remarks will naturally suggest to the thoughtful mind a train of inquiries of this sort:――――How can we account for it that the books of Moses allude so very rarely to the future state of man’s being――to heaven and to hell? Had even the best men of those times any definite belief in the future life and in its retribution for deeds done in this? How happens it that both the law and the rewards or penalties of their civil code, and indeed of their religious code as well, make so much account of present retribution and so little of the future?