The law which protected the children of an unbeloved wife from a husband's partiality, the law which secured so much delicacy and consideration to a captive woman, the law which secured the marriage-rights of the purchased slave and forbade making merchandise of her, the law which gave to the newly married wife the whole of the first year of her husband's time and attention, are specimens of what we mean when we say that the influence of a noble-hearted woman passed into the laws of Moses. No man could be more chivalric or more ready to protect, but it required a woman's heart to show where protection was most needed, and we see in all these minute guardings of family life why the Divine Being speaks of a woman as being divinely associated with the great lawgiver: "I sent before you Moses and Aaron and Miriam." Thus a noble womanly influence passed through Moses into permanent institutions. The nation identified her with the MAN who was their glory, and Miriam became immortal in Moses. [Illustration: DEBORAH THE PROPHETESS] DEBORAH THE PROPHETESS. The Book of Judges is the record of a period which may be called the Dark Ages of the Jewish Church, even as the mediæval days were called the Dark Ages of Christianity. In both cases, a new system of purity and righteousness, wholly in advance of anything the world had ever before known, had been inaugurated by the visible power of God,--the system of Moses, and the system of Christ. But these pure systems seem, in each case, to have been allowed to struggle their own way through the mass of human ignorance and sin. The ideal policy of Moses was that of an ultra-democratic community, so arranged that perforce there must be liberty, fraternity, and equality. There was no chance for overgrown riches or abject poverty. Landed property was equally divided in the outset, and a homestead allowed to each family. Real estate could not be alienated from a family for more than a generation; after that period, it returned again to its original possessor. The supreme law of the land was love. Love, first, to the God and Father, the invisible head of all; and secondly, towards the neighbor, whether a Jewish brother or a foreigner and stranger. The poor, the weak, the enslaved, the old, the deaf, the blind, were protected by solemn and specific enactments. The person of woman was hedged about by restraints and ordinances which raised her above the degradation of sensuality to the honored position of wife and mother. Motherhood was exalted into special honor, and named as equal with fatherhood in the eye of God. "Ye shall fear every man _his mother_ and his father, and keep my Sabbaths: I am the Lord." (Lev. xix. 3.)