[164] Cicero describes this juridical comedy which was still in force in his time.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION

ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY

=The Christ.=—­He whom the Jews were expecting as their liberator and king, the Messiah, appeared in Galilee, a small province of the North, hardly regarded as Jewish, and in a humble family of carpenters.  He was called Jesus, but his Greek disciples called him the Christ (the anointed), that is to say, the king consecrated by the holy oil.  He was also called the Master, the Lord, and the Saviour.  The religion that he came to found is that we now possess.  We all know his life:  it is the model of every Christian.  We know his instructions by heart; they form our moral law.  It is sufficient, then, to indicate what new doctrines he disseminated in the world.

=Charity.=—­Before all, Christ commended love.  “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy mind and thy neighbor as thyself....  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”  The first duty is to love others and to benefit them.  When God will judge men, he will set on his right hand those who have fed the hungry, given drink to those who were thirsty, and have clad those that were naked.  To those who would follow him the Christ said at the beginning:  “Go, ... sell all that ye have and give to the poor.”

For the ancients the good man was the noble, the rich, the brave.  Since the time of Christ the word has changed its sense:  the good man is he who loves others.  Doing good is loving others and seeking to be of service to them.  Charity (the Latin name of love) from that time has been the cardinal virtue.  Charitable becomes synonymous with beneficent.  To the old doctrine of vengeance the Christ formally opposes his doctrine of charity.  “Ye have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; but I say unto you ... whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also....  Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy; but I say unto you love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that persecute you, ... that ye may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, who maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.”  He himself on the cross prayed for his executioners, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

=Equality.=—­The Christ loved all men; he died not for one people only, but for all humanity.  He never made a difference between men; all are equal before God.  The ancient religions, even the Jewish, were religions of peoples who kept them with jealous care, as a treasure, without wishing to communicate them to other peoples.  Christ said to his disciples, “Go, and teach all nations.”  And the apostle Paul thus formulated the doctrine of Christian equality:  “There is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, bond nor free.”  Two centuries later Tertullian, a Christian writer, said, “The world is a republic, the common land of the human race.”