IT is the claim of both Jews and Christians that the Ten Commandments form the foundation, not only for the moral and civil laws of our country, but of the civilized world as well. Some bibliolaters, in their zeal, go so far as to say that there was no morality in the world before the Ten Commandments were announced. That is to say, in their opinion, morality is but a few thousand years old. Why, the world itself, according to the bible chronology, is nearly six thousand years old. Are we to understand, then, that until the time of Moses the world managed to get along without any morality at all?

But we know that the world is very much older than six thousand years, and that there were great empires and a civilization which was already old, long long before the Jews arrived. Egypt was at the zenith of her culture when the sons of Jacob appeared within her gates to beg for bread, and Babylonia and Persia were world-empires when the Jews were still slaves. But to admit that there was any morality before Moses, is to give up the bible. What need could there be of a moral law coming down from heaven, if there were one already growing out of the earth? No deity is needed to find for us what was never lost, or to give us what we already possessed. To admit, therefore, that there were ancient nations who flourished and waxed strong in art and commerce, in culture and character, long before the Ten Commandments descended from the clouds, would be fatal to the claim that there can be no morality without the bible.

The defenders of the bible find themselves in a very embarrassing position. They can not deny Egypt, Assyria, Persia, Greece, Rome; but if they admit the greatness and glory of these empires, what becomes of their claim that morality was first given to the world by Moses in the wilderness? There is only one way out of the dilemma: Refuse to discuss the question. And that is practically the tactics of the bible champions at present. It is absolutely impossible to find any more an educated and respectable churchman who is willing to debate the question before an audience of inquirers. Silence is their one remaining asset.

It is related in the bible that the Ten Commandments were written on two tables of stone by the deity himself. But in a fit of anger, Moses, in whose custody the documents in stone were placed, "cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount." * This was a device to account for the nonexistence of the tables. If ever there were a time when a miracle would have been in order, it was when Moses dropped the commandments. After forty days of labor, Jehovah delivers the moral law, and not wishing to entrust the work of taking down his dictation to Moses, he inscribes them on imperishable stone, with his own hand. And then they fall and break, like any schoolboy's slate. The slates should not have broken—and they would not have broken—if all the other miracles told in the bible are true. To have miracles without number when we do not need them, and then to refuse the one miracle that could have saved the handwriting of God, is a fatal argument against the miraculous.

It is true that Moses was summoned to the mountain for a new set of tables and commandments, but as I shall proceed to explain, the second Ten Commandments were not written by the deity. His handwriting was irretrievably lost by the breaking of the first tables. We have miracles to preserve shoes and garments, and dead men's bones, but none to save the writing of God. Thus it is that all the "original" documents of the prophets and the apostles have perished, while the real wood of the cross and the coat of Jesus have been miraculously preserved.

In Exodus, thirty-second chapter, verse sixteen, we read:

And the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables.

But what was the use? The tables broke, and the writing is lost. Why go to all that trouble to produce original documents, only to lose them so shortly after they are finished? The thirty-fourth chapter and the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth verses of the book of Exodus inform us that the second collection of Commandments which were given to replace the broken tables of stone, were not written by Jehovah, but by Moses:

And the Lord said unto Moses, write thou these words... And he (Moses) was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights... And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments. *

But not only were the new commandments not in God's handwriting, but they were also totally different from the first Ten Commandments. Thus it was not only the divine writing that perished, but also the moral law as first given. It is true that Moses reports what the lost commandments were, but if he could remember them, why was it necessary for him to go up the Mount for a transcript of them? The unpleasant conclusion is forced upon our minds that not only had Moses forgotten what the broken tables of stone contained, but Jehovah, himself, could not remember them. Where, then, did Moses get the Ten Commandments which he says were on the broken slates? I do not know. If he reported them from memory, and his memory were reliable, why was a second set of slates ordered, that the Lord might write on them "the words that were in the first tables, which thou breakest"? * If a second series of commandments were given, as the text plainly states, because the first series was lost, how did Moses reproduce the lost commandments? Could he have put the fragments of the broken tables together, restoring thereby the handwriting of God? Really, it is not history that the bible gives us, but gossip.

It has already been shown that the deity did not write the second version of the moral law with his own hand, although he promised he would. Let me now present the second version of the Ten Commandments, to show that Jehovah had forgotten just as completely as had Moses, the first Ten Commandments which he himself had inscribed on the slates.

Exodus XXXIV.

1. Thou shalt worship no other god: for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a Jealous God.

2. Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.

3. The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep.

4. Every firstling that is male is mine. And the first fruits of the land thou shalt bring unto the Lord.

5. Six days thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest.

6. Thou shalt observe the feast of weeks.

7. Thrice in the year shall all your men children (women not wanted) appear before the Lord God.

8. Thou shalt not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven.

9. The sacrifice of the passover shall not be left over till the morning.

10. Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother's milk.

That these were the commandments given to take the place of those unfortunately lost appears by the text that follows, and which we ask permission to quote again:

And the Lord said unto Moses, Write thou these words:

... And he wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments. *

By comparing these two pronouncements, only a very slight resemblance can be discovered between them. In both documents, God is jealous, and the feast of Sabbaths and weeks is ordered to be scrupulously observed. There is not a single commandment in the second deliverance which can be described as ethical in its import. It is a "moral law" without the remotest suggestion of morality in it. Nothing is said about the duty of man to himself, his neighbor, or his posterity. The Ten Commandments which were broken and lost contained, at least, prohibitory clauses against murder, theft, adultery, and the bearing of false witness against one's neighbor. Even though these interdictions had in view the protection of the Jew only, as the conduct of Israel toward other peoples plainly shows; and even though only a portion of the lost decalogue concerned itself with morality at all, the others being of a theological and ceremonial character, still they, at least, have the appearance of being a moral law, while the second decalogue is not even that.

And why are there ten commandments? The Protestants split the first commandment which forbids the worship of other gods and the making of graven images into two separate commandments; the Catholics, on the other hand, divide the last commandment, which says, "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house," or wife, or ox, or ass, into two, by separating the wife from the ass and the ox. "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife," is a commandment by itself in the Catholic bible, while, as explained, the Protestant bible makes no distinction between a man's ox, ass and wife. Of course, we prefer the Catholic manipulation of the bible, in this respect, to that of the Protestants, who are more jealous of the favor of Jehovah than of that of woman. But by what authority do these sects go about splitting the divine commandments? Only recently Cardinal Gibbons expressed great horror at the suggestion of certain Protestants that the Ten Commandments should be abbreviated and modernized. "What blasphemy," exclaimed the cardinal. Yet, his church was guilty of that very kind of "blasphemy" when it separated what God had joined together—the ass, the ox and the wife.