[Footnote 2:  The sentences of the Jewish doctors of the time are collected in the little book entitled, Pirke Aboth.]

[Footnote 3:  The comparisons will be made afterward as they present themselves.  It has been sometimes supposed that—­the compilation of the Talmud being later than that of the Gospels—­parts may have been borrowed by the Jewish compilers from the Christian morality.  But this is inadmissible—­a wall of separation existed between the Church and the Synagogue.  The Christian and Jewish literature had scarcely any influence on one another before the thirteenth century.]

[Footnote 4:  Matt. vii. 12; Luke vi. 31.  This axiom is in the book of Tobit, iv. 16.  Hillel used it habitually (Talm. of Bab., Shabbath, 31 a), and declared, like Jesus, that it was the sum of the Law.]

[Footnote 5:  Matt. v. 39, and following; Luke vi. 29.  Compare Jeremiah, Lamentations iii. 30.]

[Footnote 6:  Matt. v. 29, 30, xviii. 9; Mark ix. 46.]

[Footnote 7:  Matt. v. 44; Luke vi. 27.  Compare Talmud of Babylon, Shabbath, 88 b; Joma, 23 a.]

[Footnote 8:  Matt. vii. 1; Luke vi. 37.  Compare Talmud of Babylon, Kethuboth, 105 b.]

[Footnote 9:  Luke vi. 37.  Compare Lev. xix. 18; Prov. xx. 22; Ecclesiasticus xxviii. 1, and following.]

[Footnote 10:  Luke vi. 36; Siphre, 51 b (Sultzbach, 1802).]

[Footnote 11:  A saying related in Acts xx. 35.]

[Footnote 12:  Matt. xxiii. 12; Luke xiv. 11, xviii. 14.  The sentences quoted by St. Jerome from the “Gospel according to the Hebrews” (Comment. in Epist. ad Ephes., v. 4; in Ezek. xviii.; Dial. adv.  Pelag., iii. 2), are imbued with the same spirit.]

Upon alms, pity, good works, kindness, peacefulness, and complete disinterestedness of heart, he had little to add to the doctrine of the synagogue.[1] But he placed upon them an emphasis full of unction, which made the old maxims appear new.  Morality is not composed of more or less well-expressed principles.  The poetry which makes the precept loved, is more than the precept itself, taken as an abstract truth.  Now it cannot be denied that these maxims borrowed by Jesus from his predecessors, produce quite a different effect in the Gospel to that in the ancient Law, in the Pirke Aboth, or in the Talmud.  It is neither the ancient Law nor the Talmud which has conquered and changed the world.  Little original in itself—­if we mean by that that one might recompose it almost entirely by the aid of older maxims—­the morality of the Gospels remains, nevertheless, the highest creation of human conscience—­the most beautiful code of perfect life that any moralist has traced.

[Footnote 1:  Deut. xxiv., xxv., xxvi., &c.; Isa. lviii. 7; Prov. xix. 17; Pirke Aboth, i.; Talmud of Jerusalem, Peah, i. 1; Talmud of Babylon, Shabbath, 63 a.]