THE fundamental truths of morality and religion

can never be traced to individual original teachers. Intuitions of them dawn faintly in the mind of the savage, and become gradually brighter as civilization advances, till at last they shine out clearly in the words of power spoken by the foremost men of each successive age. Even in physical science we all know there is rarely any absolutely new and original discovery. Each truth has been for some time vaguely apprehended or suspected before the hour arrive when some investigator, more fortunate or more gifted than his fellows, actually digs out the precious ore from the mountain-side, and calls aloud,

Behold, here is gold!"—and then thousands rush to share the treasure. But in each case of a new truth, moral or physical, it is to him that has so discovered, so uttered it, that all mankind may profit thereby, that our gratitude is due. It is not to Plato who dreamed the Atlantis, nor to the wild Vikings who first reached the western shore, but to Columbus who added a new world to the old, that we owe America.

And in like manner it is to the moral teachers who have given to the light of day and the common

consciousness of mankind the principles vaguely believed or half remembered before, that we justly attribute their revelation; even though we may be able to trace out each of their precepts in the lessons of earlier prophets whose words have lain in the earth as seeds never germinating.

Among the truths which a great moral teacher brings to light, it is not impossible to distinguish two classes. The first class consists of such as are already current in his age and country, of which he has merely made a selection, guided by his own. moral taste. The second consists of such as are different from those of his age, and which he has either caught from the sheen of some far-off traditions in the past, or else worked out altogether from his own inner life and experience. The truths of this second class are in a peculiar sense his own. They are the intuitions of his deepest consciousness, his "original revelation." And when the teacher's moral lessons are so pure and divine that we rightly attribute them to the inspiration of God, it is peculiarly these intuitive truths to which we turn as the manifestations of such inspiration. What was common to his age and country we conclude him to have learned by the external teaching of his parents or masters. What was peculiar to himself, what he was enabled to see was true in spite of contending prejudices, that we conclude him to have learned from the Spirit of God enlightening his soul.

Thus if we could separate the precepts of any moral teacher into the two classes, and eliminating all which was common to his time and country, reserve only what was peculiar to himself, we should arrive at conclusions interesting in a double point of view. We should have on the human side a transcript of the man himself, a portrait of his spiritual physiognomy-not indeed as he may have been in deed and word while "wrapped in this muddy vesture of decay" and obeying falteringly the law within, but as he ought to have been, as his own soul required him to be. We should have before us the photograph, not of the outer, but of the "inner man." And on the divine side we should have the nearest approach attainable to a record of the inspiration granted to him. should see brought together the sum of his share of the great lessons of the Divine Master whereby the human race has been training since creation. His rank in the hierarchy of prophets would be determined by the fulness and importance of such inspiration. Such a task as this is manifestly beyond our power in the case of most of the great moral teachers of antiquity. We can rarely obtain their genuine precepts with any completeness, and still less often can we form a just estimate of the current morals of their countrymen, so as to discriminate what in their teaching was common to their contemporaries, from what was peculiar to themselves. Half-shadowy prophets like Menu and Thoth

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and Zoroaster and Buddha, and even historical philosophers like Pythagoras and Confucius and Socrates and Zeno, are mostly too far beyond our reach to enable us to treat their recorded precepts by any such process as we have imagined; and in later times, when the teacher's own doctrines might be better ascertained, the share of them truly to be called original would be still more impossible to discriminate. Ancient moralists were properly Prophets of Morals; but modern ones have had little else to do than to frame intellectual systems in which their precepts should be properly fitted in scientific order.

There is, however, one instance in which it would seem that we actually possess materials for forming a tolerably trustworthy estimate of the current morals of the age and country in which the greatest of moral teachers lived, and consequently of eliminating them from his recorded precepts, retaining a residue which shall truly represent his peculiar and proper morality. The Old Testament prophets, the treatise of Philo on the Essenes, the histories of Josephus, and the Jerusalem and Babylonish Talmuds (certainly preserving the precepts of ante-christian schools of rabbins), afford us a very large insight into the state of thought on moral subjects in Palestine in the first century. The careful study and collation of these books with the Gospel parables and precepts, as partially accomplished by German scholars, at once reveals the identity between a

large share of Christian doctrines and those which were taught habitually (although with many puerile additions) in the Rabbinical schools of the same period.*

For example, as quoted by Hennell:-Targum, Hierosol., Genes. xxxviii. 26: Judah speaks thus, "It is better for me that I should be burned in this world with a little fire, than that I should be burned in the world to come with a devouring flame." Debarim Rabba, sect. 7: Rabbi Simeon ben Chelpatha said, "He who hath learned the words of the law and doeth them not, is more guilty than he who has learned nothing. A certain king sent two gardeners into his garden. The one planted trees, but afterwards cut them down. The other planted nothing, and cut down nothing. With which of these was the king wrath?" Mechilta, fol. 32, 1: "He who created the day, created also the food thereof. Whosoever hath whereof to eat to-day, and saith, But shall I eat to-morrow? he is of little faith." Schabbath (tract of the Mishna), fol. 131: "Whosoever hath mercy on men, on him will God have mercy; but he who showeth no mercy to men, neither to him will God show mercy." Schabbath, fol. 883: Our rabbins deliver to us, "They who receive scorn but scorn no man, who bear reproaches and return them not, who show love to men and rejoice in tribulations, of them the Scripture saith, They shall love Him and be as the sun going forth in his might." Aboth R. Nathan, c. 23: "He is a hero who maketh his enemy his friend." Sanhedrin, fol. 48: "Suffer thyself to be cursed, but do not thou curse others." Synopsis, Sohar: "A man ought every night to forgive the fault of him that offendeth him." Sohar, fol. 4: "Whosoever lendeth to any one in public, with him God dealeth according to justice; but he who does it secretly, with him rests the blessing." Sanhedrin (Mishna), fol, 43: Rabbi Jehuda ben Levi said, "Whilst the temple stood, if any man offered a holocaust, he obtained the reward of a holocaust; if an oblation, the reward of an oblation. But if a man be of an humble spirit, the Scriptures consider him as having offered all sacrifices."