The great Hebrew law-giver, under whose leadership the Jews achieved their emancipation from the bondage of Egypt, and began to assert themselves as an independent people among the nations of the earth; in requiring of the people the fear of God and the observance of His commandments, he laid the national life on a sure basis, and he was succeeded by a race of prophets who from age to age reminded the people that in regard or disregard for what he required of them depended their prosperity or their ruin as a nation, of which from their extreme obduracy they had again and again to be admonished.