ts.... Incense is an abomination unto me: for
your hands are 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
bea