may present this method and that of moral culture and assimilation to the character of the Infinite, but practically all men will approve the philosophy taught in Christ’s touching parable of the Prodigal Son.  The beauty, the force, the propriety of its principles strike the human understanding, whether of the sage or of the savage, like a flash of sunlight, and no human heart can fail to be touched by its lessons.  Yet where in all the wide waste of heathen faiths or philosophies is there anything which even remotely resembles the story of the Prodigal?  Where is the system in which such an incident and such a lesson would not be wholly out of place?

In that ancient book of the Egyptian religion known as “The Book of the Dead,” the souls of the departed when arraigned before the throne of Osiris are represented as all joining in one refrain of self-exculpation, uttering such pleas as these:  “I have not offended or caused others to offend.”  “I have not snared ducks illegally on the Nile.”  “I have not used false weights or measures.”  “I have not defrauded my neighbor by unjustly opening the sluices upon my own land!” Any sense of the inward character of sin or any conception of wrong attitudes of mind or heart toward God is utterly wanting.  It is simply the plea of “not guilty,” which even the most hardened culprit may make in court.  In one of the Vedic hymns to Varuna there is something which looks like confession of sin, but it really ends in palliation.  “It was not our doing, O Varuna, it was necessity; an intoxicating draught, passion, dice, thoughtlessness.  The old is there to mislead the young.  Even sleep brings unrighteousness.”  And the remission sought for is not one involving a change of character but only release from an external bond.  “Absolve us from the sins of our fathers and from those which we committed with our own bodies.  Release Vasishtha, O King, like a thief who has feasted on stolen oxen.  Release him like a calf from the rope."[222]

In the Penitential Psalms of the ancient Akkadians, who inhabited Northern Assyria in the times of Abraham, and who may have retained something of that true faith from which Abraham’s father had declined, we find a nearer approach to true penitence, but that also lacks the inner sense of sin and seeks merely an exemption from punishments.

Only in the Old and New Testaments is sin recognized as of the nature of personal guilt.  Accordingly, Christianity alone recognizes the fact that right thoughts and motives and a worthy character are the gifts of God.  Cicero has truly remarked[223] that men justly thank God for external blessings, but never for virtue, or talent, or character.  All that is regarded as their own.  And such is the conceit of human self-righteousness in all man-made religions, whether Hindu or Greek, ancient or modern.  Philosophy is in its very nature haughty and aristocratic.  Even Plato betrays this element.  It is only the Christian apostle that is heard to say, with heartfelt