Page:The old paths, or The Talmud tested by Scripture.djvu/227

 consciences of the weak and superstitious. A man's domestics, or his children, or even his wife, would become spies over all his Sabbath doings, and the denouncers of every transgression; and thus domestic confidence, without which not even the shadow of happiness can exist, would be destroyed, and a man's foes would be those of his own household. Much has lately been thought and said about the sanguinary nature of the laws of England, but the laws of Draco himself were merciful when compared with the religious enactments of the rabbies. Draco only sentenced to death men convicted of a crime. The oral law condemns to stoning the man, woman, or child who will venture to write two letters of the alphabet, or even who will extinguish fire to prevent a public injury. Nay, in some cases, where it actually pronounces a man innocent, it nevertheless commands him to be flogged.

"If a man intended to gather black figs, but gathered white figs, or if he intended to gather figs and afterwards grapes, but the matter has been inverted, and he gathered the grapes first, and afterwards the figs, he is not guilty. Although he have gathered all that he thought of gathering, yet, because he did not gather them in the intended order, he is not guilty, for he did what was unintentional, and the law forbids only intentional work." (Ibid.) We pass by the manifest absurdity of this decision, which is, however, sufficient to prove that this law is not of God, because it is more important to consider what is to be done with a man not guilty. The law of England, or any other civilized country, would say, of course, that he is to go free; but not so the oral law, it commands that the man should be flogged.

"Wherever it is said, he that doeth anything is not guilty, the meaning is, that he is not liable to excision, nor stoning, nor a sacrifice, but that thing is unlawful to be done, and the