full of blood; cease to do evil, learn to do well, seek judgment, and then come."[2] In later times, certain doctors, Simeon the just,[3] Jesus, son of Sirach,[4] Hillel,[5] almost reached this point, and declared that the sum of the Law was righteousness.  Philo, in the Judaeo-Egyptian world, attained at the same time as Jesus ideas of a high moral sanctity, the consequence of which was the disregard of the observances of the Law.[6] Shemaia and Abtalion also more than once proved themselves to be very liberal casuists.[7] Rabbi Johanan ere long placed works of mercy above even the study of the Law![8] Jesus alone, however, proclaimed these principles in an effective manner.  Never has any one been less a priest than Jesus, never a greater enemy of forms, which stifle religion under the pretext of protecting it.  By this we are all his disciples and his successors; by this he has laid the eternal foundation-stone of true religion; and if religion is essential to humanity, he has by this deserved the Divine rank the world has accorded to him.  An absolutely new idea, the idea of a worship founded on purity of heart, and on human brotherhood, through him entered into the world—­an idea so elevated, that the Christian Church ought to make it its distinguishing feature, but an idea which, in our days, only few minds are capable of embodying.

[Footnote 1:  Matt. v. 23, 24.]

[Footnote 2:  Isaiah i. 11, and following.  Compare ibid., lviii. entirely; Hosea vi. 6; Malachi i. 10, and following.]

[Footnote 3:  Pirke Aboth, i. 2.]

[Footnote 4:  Ecclesiasticus xxxv. 1, and following.]

[Footnote 5:  Talm. of Jerus., Pesachim, vi. 1.  Talm. of Bab., the same treatise 66 a; Shabbath, 31 a.]

[Footnote 6:  Quod Deus Immut., Sec. 1 and 2; De Abrahamo, Sec. 22; Quis Rerum Divin.  Haeres, Sec. 13, and following; 55, 58, and following; De Profugis, Sec. 7 and 8; Quod Omnis Probus Liber, entirely; De Vita Contemp., entirely.]

[Footnote 7:  Talm. of Bab., Pesachim, 67 b.]

[Footnote 8:  Talmud of Jerus., Peah, i. 1.]

An exquisite sympathy with Nature furnished him each moment with expressive images.  Sometimes a remarkable ingenuity, which we call wit, adorned his aphorisms; at other times, their liveliness consisted in the happy use of popular proverbs.  “How wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?  Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then thou shalt see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Matt. vii. 4, 5.  Compare Talmud of Babylon, Baba Bathra, 15 b, Erachin, 16 b.]