Human actions and human passions are no doubt ascribed by Moses to God.  A good deal of criticism has been expended upon the Jewish Scriptures by those who think that philosophy consists in making God as different and distant from man as possible, and so prefer to speak of him as Deity, Providence, and Nature.  But it is only because man is made in the image of God that he can revere God at all.  Jacobi says that, “God, in creating, theomorphizes man; man, therefore, necessarily anthropomorphizes God.”  And Swedenborg teaches that God is a man, since man was made in the image of God.  Whenever we think of God as present and living, when we ascribe to him pleasure and displeasure, liking and disliking, thinking, feeling, and willing, we make him like a man.  And not to do this may be speculative theism, but is practical atheism.  Moses forbade the Jews to make any image or likeness of God, yet the Pentateuch speaks of his jealousy, wrath, repentance; he hardens Pharaoh’s heart, changes his mind about Balaam, and comes down from heaven in order to see if the people of Sodom were as wicked as they were represented to be.  These views are limitations to the perfections of the Deity, and so far the views of Moses were limited.  But this is also the strong language of poetry, which expresses in a striking and practical way the personality, holiness, and constant providence of God.

But Moses was not merely a man of genius, he was also a man of knowledge and learning.  During forty years he lived in Egypt, where all the learning of the world was collected; and, being brought up by the daughter of Pharaoh as her son, was in the closest relations with the priesthood.  The Egyptian priests were those to whom Pythagoras, Herodotus, and Plato went for instruction.  Their sacred books, as we have seen, taught the doctrine of the unity and spirituality of God, of the immortality of the soul, and its judgment in the future world, beside teaching the arts and sciences.  Moses probably knew all that these books could teach, and there is no doubt that he made use of this knowledge afterward in writing his law.  Like the Egyptian priests he believed in one God; but, unlike them, he taught that doctrine openly.  Like them he established a priesthood, sacrifices, festivals, and a temple service; but, unlike them, he allowed no images or idols, no visible representations of the Unseen Being, and instead of mystery and a hidden deity gave them revelation and a present, open Deity.  Concerning the future life, about which the Egyptians had so much to say, Moses taught nothing.  His rewards and punishments were inflicted in this world.  Retribution, individual and national, took place here.  As this could not have been from ignorance or accident, it must have had a purpose, it must have been intentional.  The silence of the Pentateuch respecting immortality is one of the most remarkable features in the Jewish religion.  It has been often objected to.  It has been asserted