In direct opposition to all of this and many other instances of class legislation we read : "Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty, but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbor." . . . "Ye shall not respect persons in judg ment but ye shall hear the small as well as the great." (Lev. xix :z 5 ; Dent. i 7.) In the literary presentation there is a great difference. The laws of the Babylonian king are crude in statement beside the laws of Moses. The classifications of the Biblical laws are the basis of those of the English common law. Blackstone says : "Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human law." The laws of Hammu rabi do not indicate any consciousness in the law giver of such a generalization of human rights and duties as that contained in the Ten Commandments or any such sublime moral heights as are found in the words : "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might." (Deut. vi :5.) "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." (Lev. xix :18.) And yet in his great summary our Lord has said : "Upon these two commandments hang ail the law and the prophets." (Matt. xxii :40.) (14) Similarities to Law of Moses. That there are similarities between the Code of Hain murabi and that of Moses is freely admitted, but if they were tenfold more abundant it would not by any means prove that the Jewish law giver was in any way indebted to the Baby lonian king.
It is evident to Biblical scholars that the car dinal principles of righteousness have been in the world to a greater or less extent ever since the Creator first revealed Himself to His creatures.
"The Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day" (probably through the medium ship of His name-bearing angel—Ex. xxiii :21) gave to our first parents lessons of obedience and loyalty. That instructions were afterward given concerning the altar and sin offerings we have a right to infer from the fact that "Abel offered up a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain." We read also that ''Enoch walked with God" and Noah at the time of the building of the ark, knew without further instruction which were "the clean beasts" long before the Leviti cal law was given (Gen. vii :2o). He, too, had "walked with God," and on coining out of the ark "Noah huilded an altar unto the Lord, and took of eery clean beast and of every clean fowl and offered burnt offerings on the altar."
(viii :2o.) Thus at the repeopling of the earth after flood the altar and the sacrifice were again in stituted, for "Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord." In the days of Abraham we find not only the altar and the sacrifice but also a priesthood. Melchizedek was the priest-king of the early city of Salem—the City of Peace—which was called Uru-salem in the Tel-el-Amarna tablets. He was "a priest of the Most High God," to whom Abraham paid tithes. (See Gen. xiv ; Ps. cx :4; Heb. v :6-1o, vi :20, vii :1-15-17-21.) See also the tablets of Tel el Amarna.
We know, too, that at this time and before this time Abraham had God's commandments and His statutes and His laws. Thus we see that God has never left Himself without a wit ness among the children of men, and we can not wonder that among all nations we still find some traces of laws which are more or less righteous—some vestiges of the altar, the offer ing and the priesthood.
Men have often concerned themselves to find similarities between certain codes and specu lated whether or not one was indebted to an other without investigating the earliest means through which the cardinal principles of right eousness were given to the world. Blackstone says : "The divine or revealed law is the law of nature, revealed by God himself." (Black stone, Introduction.) Not only has much effort been made to prove that Moses was indebted to Hammurabi, but Prof. D. H. Mfiller has worked out a number of striking parallels between the Babylonish Code and the Roman Twelve Tables ; Prof. Cohn compared the Laws of the West Goths, while incidental comparisons with the Laws of Manu are noted by Mr. Cook. The Code of Ham murabi receives illustration from a variety of other sources which might be mentioned in an extensive bibliography, and now men are won dering whether a knowledge of this code can really have spread to Rome or India. But back of it all are God's early revelations to the chil dren of men ; "Noah was a preacher of right eousness" before "the beginnings of Babylon," and Abraham "obeyed . . . my command ments, my statutes and my laws" before Israel was born or his children were thought of, ex cept in the purpose and promise of God.
Hence when God called Moses to the lead ership of His people He called the man who had been trained for the work and gave to him a compendium of laws designed for those whom he led out of bondage into victory—led be tween the walls of the cleft sea and through the wilderness of sin even to the borders of the promised land.