Page:Labour - The Divine Command, 1890.djvu/75

Rh yet in spite of that, they sinned not against God. You maintain also that bread cannot be exchanged for money; that we must absolutely labor for it with our hands. It is an evident absurdity. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and other ancestors of the human race were rich, and had their slaves, both male and female. We must conclude that they did not work themselves, but ate bread produced by the labor of others; and yet they were not for that reason held guilty before God.

52. And to prove more strongly the falsity of your assertions, the two great legislators, Moses and Jesus Christ, have never spoken of this commandment. When Moses wrote: "Knead thy bread in the sweat of thy face," he referred to all occupations. This must be the sense we are to give to his words, if we remember that Moses lived for forty years at the court of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, without working. During the following forty years, he herded sheep in the pastures of his father-in-law Jethro, in the land of Midian ; but he did not labor for bread. During forty other years he commanded the Israelites in the Wilderness, without laboring. Thus he never labored. Nevertheless, God accepted him, loved him, and placed him above all other prophets; but, according to you, Moses was a parasite.

53. It is the same with Jesus Christ. He is