Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/135

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ON THE TOP OF MOUNT SINAI.
121

ond table of the law contain the principles of Universal Justice. If it were obeyed, there is not an act of injustice which could find a place among men. Is it then too much to say that the Ten Commandments are the acorn which contains the oak of civilization? Who can measure the germinating power of a great principle of justice — how it multiplies itself in its application to different countries and races, adapting itself to all times and climes, to all the relations of men as they may change to the end of the world? It is the handful of corn in the top of the mountain, but the fruit thereof shakes like Lebanon. To a law so beneficent, is it possible to ascribe an origin too high or too sacred? Law in its highest form has always been regarded as the emanation of Divinity. "Law," says Hooker, "has her seat in the bosom. of God, and her voice is the harmony of the world. Ad things in heaven and earth do her homage — the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power." There is a natural fitness in a Law so Divine being delivered from the skies. The greatest of living English poets, when he would personify Liberty, beholds her "on the heights":

" Of old sat Freedom on the heights,
The thunders breaking at her feet;
Above her shook the starry lights:
She heard the torrents meet.

"Within her place she did rejoice,
Self-gathered in her prophet mind;
But fragments of her mighty voice
Came rolling on the wind."

What is thus spoke of Liberty may be said of Law, that

Of old she sat upon the heights,
The thunders breaking at her feet:

Even more than Liberty does Law deserve to be thus lifted up in the sight of the nations, for it is a higher and a diviner thing. "The Universe can exist without Liberty;