“Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law?  Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind; this is the first and great commandment:  and the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself:  on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Matt. xxii. 35-40.)

The second precept occurs in St. Matthew (xix. 16), on another occasion similar to this; and both of them, on a third similar occasion, in Luke (x. 27).  In these two latter instances the question proposed was, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?”

Upon all these occasions I consider the words of our Saviour as expressing precisely the same thing as what I have put into the mouth of the moral philosopher.  Nor do I think that it detracts much from the merit of the answer, that these precepts are extant in the Mosaic code:  for his laying his finger, if I may so say, upon these precepts; his drawing them out from the rest of that voluminous institution; his stating of them, not simply amongst the number, but as the greatest and the sum of all the others; in a word, his proposing of them to his hearers for their rule and principle, was our Saviour’s own.

And what our Saviour had said upon the subject appears to me to have fixed the sentiment amongst his followers.

Saint Paul has it expressly, “If there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself;” (Rom. xiii. 9.) and again, “For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” (Gal. v. 14.)

Saint John, in like manner, “This commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God love his brother also.” (1 John iv. 21.)

Saint Peter, not very differently:  “Seeing that ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit, unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently.”  (I Peter i, 22.)

And it is so well known as to require no citations to verify it, that this love, or charity, or, in other words, regard to the welfare of others, runs in various forms through all the preceptive parts of the apostolic writings.  It is the theme of all their exhortations, that with which their morality begins and ends, from which all their details and enumerations set out, and into which they return.

And that this temper, for some time at least, descended in its purity to succeeding Christians, is attested by one of the earliest and best of the remaining writings of the apostolical fathers, the epistle of the Roman Clement.  The meekness of the Christian character reigns throughout the whole of that excellent piece.  The occasion called for it.  It was to compose the dissensions of the church of Corinth.  And