Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/141

 should worship, and punished idolatry and blasphemy as the greatest of crimes. This brings up the whole question of religious laws. With our notions of liberty, any laws whatever in regard to man's faith or worship seem a violation of the inalienable rights of conscience. But here a ruler prescribes to his nation the Being to be worshipped, and enforces conformity by the most rigorous statutes. "There is no God but God," said Mahomet, echoing what Moses had said so many centuries before; and not Mahomet himself was more intolerant of disobedience or contempt of the Divine authority. Idolatry was put down by force of arms. This, it is said, transcends the proper sphere of human law: it exalts ceremonies into duties, and denounces as crimes acts which have no moral wrong. Thus it rewards without merit, and punishes without guilt. Was not then the Hebrew Law wanting in the first principle of justice — freedom to all religions?

Now it is quite absurd to suppose that any Israelite had conscientious scruples against this worship, or seriously doubted whether Jehovah or Baal, whose bloody sacrifices had been offered on Mount Serbal, were the true God. They had been rescued from slavery by a direct interposition of the Almighty. The sea had opened its waves for their passage; they had been led by an Almighty Deliverer; and it was His voice which they heard from the cliffs of Sinai.

But it was not merely because their Religion was true, and the only true worship, that they were required to accept it; but because also of the peculiar relation which its Divine Author had assumed towards the Hebrew state as its Founder and Protector. That relation was declared, not in the cold and stately formula, "There is no God but God," but in words which are warm and living as with the