Excerpt from He Opened to Us the Scriptures: A Study of Christ's Better Way in the Use of ScriptureIn the process of canonization law is apt to take a leading part, because the authority of law is a matter of immediate practical necessity. Post-exilic Judaism was built upon it. When the book was endangered martyrs gave their lives to save it. But in such codes as the Mosaic there is at first no dif ferentiation of civil from criminal law, nor even of religious ceremonial from secular jurisprudence. Still less do we find discrimination between the ideal morality of inward disposition and prescription for external conduct such as the administration of public justice requires. This is true, of course, not only of the Mosaic, but also of other ancient codes. Still there is a difference. In the modern court room lies the Bible, soiled by unreverent kisses of witnesses, true and false. This, not the statute-books at the lawyers' desks, represents invisible divine authority. Men scarcely realize the meaning of the act. It is almost forgotten in these days when legislation is cheap, and respect for the product of our wholesale lawmakers corresponds to its cheapness, that the laws were once thought of as divine, and those who made and administered them were called by poetic symbolism gods and sons of the Most High (ps.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.