It is not in the deliverance from Egypt, it is in the constructive
statesmanship that laid the foundations of the Hebrew commonwealth that the
superlative grandeur
of the leadership looms up. As we cannot imagine the Exodus without
the great leader, neither can we account for the Hebrew polity without
the great statesman.
Not merely intellectually great, but morally great – a statesman
aglow with the unselfish patriotism that refuses to grasp a sceptre or
found a dynasty. ...
It was not an empire such as had reached full development in Egypt, or existed
in rudimentary patriarchal form in the tribes around, that Moses aimed to found.
Nor was it a republic where the freedom of the citizen rested on the servitude
of the helot, and the individual was sacrificed to the state.
It was a commonwealth based upon the individual – a commonwealth whose
ideal it was that every man should sit under his own vine and fig tree, with
none to vex him or make him afraid. It was a commonwealth: in which none should
be condemned to ceaseless toil; in which, for even the bond slave, there should
be hope; and in which, for even the beast of burden, there should be rest.
A commonwealth in which, in the absence of deep poverty, the many virtues that
spring from personal independence should harden into a national character – a
commonwealth in which the family affections might knit their tendrils around
each member, binding with links stronger than steel the various parts into
the living whole.
It is not the protection of property, but the protection of humanity, that
is the aim of the Mosaic code. Its sanctions are not directed to securing
the strong in heaping up wealth as much as to preventing the weak from being
crowded
to the wall. At every point it interposes its barriers to the selfish greed
that, if left unchecked, will surely differentiate men into landlord and
serf, capitalist and working person, millionaire and tramp, ruler and ruled.
Its
Sabbath day and Sabbath year secure, even to the lowliest, rest and leisure.
With the blast of the Jubilee trumpets the slave goes free, the debt that
cannot be paid is cancelled, and a re-division of the land secures again
to the poorest
their fair share in the bounty of the common Creator. The reaper must leave
something for the gleaner; even the ox cannot be muzzled as he treadeth
out the corn. Everywhere, in everything, the dominant idea is that of our
homely
phrase: "Live and let live!" ... Read
the whole speech