Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 140.pdf/46

Rh have known thy name. Lord of truth is thy name. I never told a lie at the tribunal of truth."

The honor due to parents sprang naturally from the belief in God as "our Father which art in heaven." We constantly find inscriptions on the tombs such as the following: "I honored my father and my mother; I loved my brothers. I taught little children. I took care of orphans as though they had been my own children." In letters of excellent advice addressed by an old man of one hundred and ten years of age to a young friend — which form the most ancient book in the world, dating 3000 B.C. — he says: "The obedience of a docile son is a blessing. God loves obedience. Disobedience is hated by God. The obedience of a son maketh glad the heart of his father. A son teachable in God's service will be happy in consequence of his obedience, he will grow to be old, he will find favor." This is the earliest appearance of the "first commandment with promise "(Eph. vi. 2), the obedience to God and man which was the "essence of Hebraism."

The moral code of the Egyptians was exceedingly elaborate. It consisted of forty-two commandments or heads under which all sins might be classed. This code was the ideal placed before men on earth; it was the standard of perfection according to which they would be judged in heaven. Some of them are of local interest only, but most belong to the eternal laws of right and wrong written on the tables of the heart. Men were taught from childhood, as children are nowadays taught their catechism, that they must appear in the presence of the Divine Judge, and say: "I have not privily done evil to my neighbors. I have not afflicted any, nor caused any to weep. I have not told lies. I have not done any wicked thing. I have not done what is hateful to the gods. I have not calumniated the slave to his master. I have not been idle. I have not stolen. I have not committed adultery. have not committed murder." And so on.

But their commandments were positive as well as negative. On the tombs we find the common formula: "I have given bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothes to the naked, shelter to the stranger." In the lamentation at funerals, the mourners see the deceased entering the presence of the Divine Judge, and they chant the words: "There is no fault in him. No accuser riseth up against him. In the truth he liveth, with the truth he nourisheth himself. The gods are satisfied with all that he hath done. … He succored the afflicted, he gave bread to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, clothes to the naked, he sheltered the outcast, his doors were open to the stranger, he was a father to the fatherless." This was the principle of the final judgment announced by the Son of Man to whom "all judgment is committed," some four thousand years afterwards among the hills of Palestine.

This tenderness for suffering humanity is characteristic of the nation. Gratefully does a man acknowledge in his autobiography (4000 ): "Wandering I wandered and was hungry, bread was set before me: I fled from the land naked, there was given me fine linen." It is a glory to a man that "the poor shall make their moan at the door of his tomb." An inscription on a tomb at Beni-Hassan, written about 2500, reads: "I have not oppressed any widow. No prisoner languished in my days. No one died of hunger. When there were years of famine I had my fields ploughed. I gave food to the inhabitants, so that there was no hungry person. I gave the widow equal portions with the married. I did not prefer the rich to the poor." On a wall of the temple of Karnak there is sculptured the earliest known extraditionary treaty. It is between Rameses the Second and a Khetan prince. The last clause provides that political fugitives are to be sent back, with the following humane provision for their personal safety: "Whoever shall be