Thus we read in the same book:  “Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”  “The stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.”  “Sanctify yourselves therefore and be ye holy.”  Scores of noble passages, inculcating high morality, might be quoted.  But we have also:  “If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly saying, let us go and serve other Gods ... thou shalt not consent unto him nor hearken unto him; neither shalt thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him, but thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death.”  “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”  A man is told, that he may seize a fair woman in war, and “be her husband and she shall be thy wife.  And it shall be that if thou hast no delight in her, then thou shalt let her go whither she will.”  These teachings and many others like them have drenched Europe with blood and scorched it with fire.  Men have grown out of them; they no longer heed nor obey them, for man’s reason performs its eclectic work on Revelation, chooses the good, rejects the evil.  This is very good, but it destroys Revelation as a basis.  Christians have outgrown the lower part of their Revelation, and do not realise that in striving to explain it away they put the axe to the root of its authority.

So also is it with the Institutes of Manu, to take but one example from the great sacred literature of India.  There are precepts of the noblest order, and the essence and relative nature of morality is philosophically set out; “the sacred law is thus grounded on the rule of conduct,” and He declares that good conduct is the root of further growth in spirituality.  Apart from questions of general morality, to which we shall need to refer hereafter, let us take the varying views of women as laid down in the present Sm[r.][t.]i as accepted.  On many points there is no wiser guide than parts of this Sm[r.][t.]i, as will be seen in Chapter IV.  With regard to the marriage law, Manu says:  “Let mutual fidelity continue unto death.”  Of a father He declares:  “No father who knows must take even the smallest gratuity for his daughter; for a man, who through avarice takes a gratuity, is a seller of his offspring.”  Of the home, He says:  “Women must be honoured and adorned by their fathers, husbands, brothers and brothers-in-law who desire happiness.  Where women are honoured, there the [D.]evas are pleased; but where they are not honoured, any sacred rite is fruitless.”  “In that family where the husband is pleased with his wife and the wife with her husband [note the equality], happiness will assuredly be lasting.”  Food is to be given first in a house to “newly-married