THE CONSTRUCTOR 227 



rent theories of the consequence of Adam's fall to 

 mankind, but more impressive, was the scene at the 

 foot of Mount Sinai, when Jahveh made known 

 through Moses that He would appear in " a thick 

 cloud," so that the people might hear Him when He 

 spoke to their leader. And they beheld, the writer of 

 Exodus narrates, the descent of the god in fire upon 

 the mountain, when " God spake all these words " of 

 the Ten Commandments, and wrote them with His 

 own finger upon two tables of stone. Thus, in a 

 code, the legend of whose divine origin is accepted 

 throughout Christendom, the making of images and 

 murder, the breaking of the seventh day of the week 

 as a rest-day and theft, are put upon the same plane 

 of ethics, and the confusion between sin against man 

 and offences against ritual emphasised. 



Human nature being what it is, the supersession of 

 theories of ethical codes as integral parts of revelation 

 seems as far off as the Greek Kalends. Nevertheless, 

 some advance towards rational theories of morals is 

 being made, and in this matter Herbert Spencer, in 

 his Data of Ethics, and Huxley, in more fugitive 

 form, have done much. That death is not the penalty 

 of sin is proved by the indisputable evidence of the 

 fossil-yielding rocks ; but wrong-doing is still held to 

 be an infraction of divine law, and to involve pains 

 and penalties in a future state. As opposed to this, 



