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It is true that a great deal which in the Bible is stamped with the approval of Jehovah is bad morality as we now understand morals. Things were done and commanded to be done which would not now be ordered, or, if ordered, obeyed. The Old Testament shows a transitionary time of moral development, but one in which great lines of advancement for humanity and good conduct were laid out. The consequences of evil behavior we find also in the Classics as well as in our own literature, and I think often in less objectionable shape than in the Hebrew Bible. But men will be always convicted by their conscience in matters of conduct. And in this respect the Israelite morality has been decisive and saving. Although the morality or immorality of certain specific habits and customs has changed since the Bible times, and for that matter must always be changing as we increase in light and knowledge, the direction of morality has been laid down by the Jews from the old. The hands are to be clean, the mouth void of offence and speaking good things, the feet should tread in peaceful ways; our lives devoted to loving that which is right and to the succor of our fellowmen. There are no written words with the force behind them which the Bible words have in this connection, because they are uttered by those who had suffered from bad conduct and who early in man's history found out what cured their suffering and whose enthusiastic mission it was thenceforward to rebuke the world for sin and to point out the advantages of righteous conduct. If I sin, then thou marked me, and thou wilt not acquit me from mine iniquity!

The God of the Israelites, Yahveh, was the God of the family, race, and tribe. Only later, and in the conceptions of the prophets, did Jehovah become universal. Christianity is the extension of the Hebrew conception of a moral and naturally powerful God beyond the limits of the original people who