Deuteronomy (The Speeches of Moses) - Ferrar Fenton Bible Translation page 221

simply a Moralist dealing with the personal acts of the wicked or vicious, or criminal ;—·fields of instruction that no one saw more clearly than he were those of the Priest, Preacher, and Administrator. He was by no means blind, how- ever, to the necessity of education in social and domestic morals, but he himself was essentially a Statesman, and as a Statesman dealt with the fundamental laws of life and social organisation, as Moses had done, seeing, under the expansion of his genius by Divine inspiration, that the moral life and habits of the individuals constituting a Nation are originated or repressed by the acts and policy of the Governing Class, or itmay be by the personal influence of the holder of the chief Representative power in a State for the time being. In fact this is the great doctrine upon which he never ceases to insist

throughout his History, and in his Prophecies. His teaching is that contained ; and Morality follows Religion; and the prosperity and happiness of Nations is the outcome of their religion, and their ruin inevitably follows vice and sin.’ His doctrine was not new, but simply a revival of the Divine Law revealed to Moses at Sinai, and it -is as true now, and as vital to the life and happiness of nations, as it was then. To enforce the fact is the great object in the eyes of the Prophet from the beginning to the end of his History of his race. He illustrates it in action by showing how the depreciation of its ancestral religion invariably brought national disaster and social misery. He does not, however, teach, as all commentators have foolishly attributed to him, that at a minute’s notice, upon the personal whim or vicious inclination of a Chief or King abandoning public respect to ]EI~10vAH, and professing devotion to Baal, or some other heathen Imagination, that the whole of the Hebrew nation did the same; or that when his successor at the head of public affairs upon attaining the chief Magistracy reverted to the public profession of the worship of GOD, that all the population followed in a moment. Such an idea and doctrine is that of idiots, or monks, whose minds have been narrowed by isolation and ignorance of the facts, of life to the condition of children. lsaiah’s teaching is, on the contrary, twofold: first, that the Government of a Nation being in all cases the Incarnation of the National Thought and Will, its acts are mentally those of the People it represents, and therefore the Nation is guilty of its sins, and is consequently rewarded or punished for them by GOD. The absolute truth of this doctrine is witnessed for by all human records.