AN INFIDEL lawyer had been told by his physician that a fatal disease had fastened itself upon him and that recovery was impossible. With death staring him in the face, the lawyer went to a friend of his, who was a Christian, and asked for instruction in the Christian religion. The friend urged him to get a Bible and to study it, patiently and sympathetically, as he would his law books.
He did so.
A few days later his friend called at the house. The lawyer, with animation in his voice said: "I have been reading the moral law, the Ten Commandments."
"Well, what do you think of the law that Moses gave?"
"I will tell you first what I used to think," said the lawyer. "I sup posed that Moses was the leader of a horde of bandits, and having acquired a strong influence over a superstitious multitude of slaves, he led them out of Egypt; that on Mount Sinai he played off some sort of fireworks, much to the amazement of his ignorant fol lowers, who imagined in their mingled fear and superstition and gullibility that the exhibition was supernatural."
"But what do you think of the matter now?" inquired the friend.
"Well, I have been looking into the nature of that law given from Sinai. I have been trying to see whether I could add anything to it or take anything from it. I can not; it is perfect.
"I have been asking myself, 'Where did Moses get that law?' I have read history. The Egyptians and the other nations thereabouts were idolaters; they did have codes of law like the code of Hammurabi. But it cannot compare as a code of morals with the law that Moses gave. That law surpasses the wisdom and philosophy of the most enlightened ages. Moses gave a law in which the learning and scrutiny of all subsequent time can detect no flaw.
"Where did he get it? I am persuaded it came down from the God of heaven. And this wonderful law has convinced me of the truth and worth of the Bible. It is God's word."
