ith it the evil Eastern habit
of regarding women as intended for the toys and drudges of man, and
intensified it with a special spite against them, as the daughters of
Eve, who was first "deceived." Strangely different to the *general
Eastern feeling and showing a truer and nobler view of life, is the
precept of Manu: "Where women are honoured, there the deities are
pleased; but where they are dishonoured, there all religious acts become
fruitless" ("Anthology," p. 310).

Evil also is the teaching that repentance is higher than purity: "joy
shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenth, _more than_ over ninety
and nine just persons which need no repentance" (Luke xv. 7, 10). The
fatted calf is slain for the prodigal son, who returns home after he has
wasted all his substance; and to the laborious elder son, during the
many years of his service, the father never gave even a kid that he
might make merry with his friends (Ibid, 29). What is all this but
putting a premium upon immorality, and instructing people that the more
they sin, the more joyous will be their welcome whenever they may choose
to reform, and, like the prodigal, think to mend their broken fortunes
by repentance?

Thoroughly immoral is the teaching contained in the two parables in Luke
xvi. In the one, a steward who has wasted his master's goods, is
commended because he went and bribed his employer's debtors to assist
him, by suggesting to them that they should cheat his master by altering
the amount of the bills they owed him. In the other, the parable of the
rich man and Lazarus, the evil moral is taught that riches are in
themselves deserving of punishment, and poverty of reward. The rich man
is in hell simply because he was rich, and the poor man in Abraham's
bosom simply because he was poor; it can scarcely add, one may remark,
to the pleasure of heaven for the Lazaruses all to look at the Diveses,
and be unable to reach them, even to give them a single drop of water.

Thus whether we see that the nobler part of the Christian morality is
pre-Christian, and is neither Christian, nor Jewish, nor Hindu, nor
Buddhist, but is simply human, and belongs to the race and not to one
creed. Whether we note the omissions in its code, making it insufficient
for human guidance; whether we mark its errors, mistakes, and injurious
teachings; whichever point of view we take from which to consider it, we
find in it nothing to distinguish it above other moral codes,