be just and kind and truthful? Did
you think the whole duty of aspiring man was as simple as a hornpipe?
and you could walk through life like a gentleman and a hero, with no
more concern than it takes to go to church or to address a circular?
And yet all this time you had the eighth commandment! and, what makes it
richer, you would not have broken it for the world!

The truth is, that these commandments by themselves are of little use in
private judgment. If compression is what you want, you have their whole
spirit compressed into the golden rule; and yet there expressed with
more significance, since the law is there spiritually and not materially
stated. And in truth, four out of these ten commands, from the sixth to
the ninth, are rather legal than ethical. The police-court is their
proper home. A magistrate cannot tell whether you love your neighbour as
yourself, but he can tell more or less whether you have murdered, or
stolen, or committed adultery, or held up your hand and testified to
that which was not; and these things, for rough practical tests, are as
good as can be found. And perhaps, therefore, the best condensation of
the Jewish moral law is in the maxims of the priests, "neminem laedere"
and "suum cuique tribunere." But all this granted, it becomes only the
more plain that they are inadequate in the sphere of personal morality;
that while they tell the magistrate roughly when to punish, they can
never direct an anxious sinner what to do.

Only Polonius, or the like solemn sort of ass, can offer us a succinct
proverb by way of advice, and not burst out blushing in our faces. We
grant them one and all and for all that they are worth; it is something
above and beyond that we desire. Christ was in general a great enemy to
such a way of teaching; we rarely find Him meddling with any of these
plump commands but it was to open them out, and lift His hearers from
the letter to the spirit. For morals are a personal affair; in the war
of righteousness every man fights for his own hand; all the six hundred
precepts of the Mishna cannot shake my private judgment; my magistracy
of myself is an indefeasible charge, and my decisions absolute for the
time and case. The moralist is not a judge of appeal, but an advocate
who pleads at my tribunal. He has to show not the law, but that the law
applies. Can he convince me? then he gains the cause. And thus you find
Christ giving various counsels to varying people, and often j