Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/153

 sense the government was not a popular, but an absolute one.

But how could absolutism be consistent with equality? There is no contradiction between the two, and indeed, in some respects, no form of government is so favorable to equality as a theocracy. Encroachments upon popular liberty, and the oppression of the people, do not come from the head of the state so often as from an aristocratic class, which is arrogant and tyrannical. But in a theocracy the very exaltation of the sovereign places all subjects on the same level. God alone is great, and in His presence there is no place for human pride. Divine majesty overawes human littleness, and instead of a favored few being lifted up above their fellows, there is a general feeling of lowliness and humility in the sight of God, in which lies the very spirit and essence of equality.

As the Hebrew Law recognized no natural distinctions among the people, neither did it create any artificial distinctions. There was no hereditary class which had special rights; there was no nobility exempted from burdens laid on the poor, and from punishments inflicted on the peasantry. Whatever political power was permitted to the Hebrews, belonged to the people as a whole. No man was raised above another; and if in the making of the laws the people had no voice, yet in the administration of them they had full power, for they elected their own rulers. Moses found soon after he left Egypt that he could not administer justice in person to a whole nation. "How can I myself alone," he asked, "bear your burden, and your cumbrance, and your strife?" He therefore directed the tribes to choose out of their number their wisest men, whom he would make judges to decide every common cause, reserving to himself only the more important questions. Here was a system of popular elections,