quote an outside witness:

A very pregnant saying of T. H. Green was that during the whole
development of man the command, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as
thyself" has never varied, what has varied is the answer to the
question--Who is my neighbour?... The influence upon the
development of civilisation of the wider conception of duty and
responsibility to one's fellow-men which was introduced into the
world with the spread of Christianity can hardly be overestimated.
The extended conception of the answer to the question Who is my
neighbour? which has resulted from the characteristic doctrines of
the Christian religion--a conception transcending all the claims of
family, group, state, nation, people or race and even all the
interests comprised in any existing order of society--has been the
most powerful evolutionary force which has ever acted on society.
It has tended gradually to break up the absolutisms inherited from
an older civilization and to bring into being an entirely new type
of social efficiency[25].

Or to take another witness equally unprejudiced, who puts the same truth
more tersely still, the late Professor Lecky. "The brief record of those
three short years," referring to Christ's life, "has done more to soften
and regenerate mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and
exhortations of moralists." For a third witness we will call Mazzini.
"We owe to the Church," he declared, "the idea of the unity of the human
family and of the equality and emancipation of souls." That this is
amply borne out by the history of the Church in early days is not
difficult to prove. The unexceptionable evidence of a Pagan writer is
here very much to the point. Says Lucian of the Christians:

"Their original lawgiver had taught them that they were all brethren,
one of another.... They become incredibly alert when anything ...
affects their common interests[26]."

In the same way the ancient Christian writer Tertullian observes with
characteristic irony: "It is our care for the helpless, our practice of
lovingkindness, that brands us in the eyes of many of our opponents.
Only look, they say, 'look how they love one another[27]!'" It is not
surprising that this was so when you look into the writings which form
the New Testament. Apart from the words and example of the Founder of
Christianity, few men have ever lived who were more al