e and there.
These jewels are curiously out of place in their surroundings. Imagine a
people so savage as to need laws permitting all the abominations
referred to above, and yet so cultivated as to be capable of
appreciating the beauty of: "If thou see the ass of him that hateth thee
lying under his burden, and wouldest forbear to help him; thou shalt
surely help him" (Exodus xxiii. 5). It is time that it should be
publicly acknowledged that the so-called Mosaic code is literally a
mosaic of scattered fragments of legislation, of various ages, and
various stages of civilisation, put together a few hundred years before
Christ. At present, the whole code lies on the shoulders of
Christianity, and is fairly pleaded against it by the Freethinker.

It is not necessary to speak here against the practical morality of Old
Testament saints; the very names of Lot, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses,
Joshua, Samuel, David, etc., bring before the mind's eye a list of
crimes so foul, so cowardly, so bloody, that no enumeration of them can
be needed. Of them, we may fairly say with Virgil:--

"Non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa."

Turning to the New Testament morality, we may attack it in various ways:
we may argue that the better part of it is not new, and therefore cannot
be regarded as especially inspired, or that it leaves out of account
many virtues necessary to the well-being of families and states; or we
may contend that much of it is harmful, and much of it impracticable.

The better part is that which is NON-ORIGINAL. All that is fair and
beautiful in Christian morality had been taught in the world ages before
Christ was born. Buddha, Confucius, Lao-Tsze, Mencius, Zoroaster, Manu,
taught the noble human morality found in some of the teaching ascribed
to Christ (throughout this Section the morality put into Christ's mouth
in the New Testament will be treated as his).

Christ taught the duty of returning good for evil. Buddha said: "A man
who foolishly does me wrong I will return to him the protection of my
ungrudging love; the more evil comes from him, the more good shall go
from me" ("Anthology," by Moncure D. Conway, page 240). In the Buddhist
Dhammapada we read: "Let a man overcome anger by love; let him overcome
evil by good; let him overcome the greedy by liberality, the liar by
truth" (Ibid, p. 307). Again: "Hatred does not cease by hatred at any
time; hatred ceases by love; this is an old rule" (Ibid, p. 131).