Until the patriarch Moses presented to his people the law from Mount Sinai the wisdom and the necessity of right conduct and right living were but dimly appreciated. Men generally knew no moral law and therefore felt no impulsion to obey a code which advocated or compelled a loving consideration one of another. The law of God, expressed in the Ten Commandments, awakened in the consciousness of mankind first of all a desire to live in conformity with good, and also a more or less simple faith that in obedience to divine law men had an assurance of protection.
Misconceived religious belief has through the centuries placed greater emphasis upon the penalties of the Mosaic law than on an effort to show that intelligent obedience to God's commands would and does bring mankind into harmony with the universal and ever-operative law of good.
In the Ten Commandments as Moses gave them to the children of Israel is embodied a set of rules properly governing human conduct. They express a high standard of morality and ethics and underlie the teachings of Jesus and therefore of Christianity. If the actual spirit of these rules had been intelligently understood and obeyed, they would long since have brought forth a higher type of manhood and of human government.
