military education: of freedom chastened by discipline, and
organized by law.

I say, of freedom. No nation of those days, we have reason to
believe, enjoyed a freedom comparable to that of the old Jews. They
were, to use our modern phrase, the only constitutional people of the
East. The burdensomeness of Moses' law, ere it was overlaid, in
later days, by Rabbinical scrupulosity, has been much exaggerated.
In its simpler form, in those early times, it left every man free to
do, as we are expressly told, that which was right in his own eyes,
in many most important matters. Little seems to have been demanded
of the Jews, save those simple ten commandments, which we still hold
to be necessary for all civilized society.

And their obedience was, after all, a moral obedience; the obedience
of free hearts and wills. The law could threaten to slay them for
wronging each other; but they themselves had to enforce the law
against themselves. They were always physically strong enough to
defy it, if they chose. They did not defy it, because they believed
in it, and felt that in obedience and loyalty lay the salvation of
themselves and of their race.

It was not, understand me, the mere physical training of these forty
years which had thus made them men indeed. Whatever they may have
gained by that--the younger generation at least--of hardihood,
endurance, and self-help, was a small matter compared with the moral
training which they had gained--a small matter, compared with the
habits of obedience, self-restraint, self-sacrifice, mutual trust,
and mutual help; the inspiration of a common patriotism, of a common
national destiny. Without that moral discipline, they would have