128 ESSAYS SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL. 



ment of a capability given in reason itself. That 

 the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount should 

 thus be left to take its place as a phase in a natural 

 development seems to us to imply a false estimate 

 of the influence which Christianity exerted upon 

 ancient moral theories. It is, no doubt, true that 

 the precept of the older revelation, "Thou shalt 

 love thy neighbour as thyself," had never attained, 

 even for the Jew, its full meaning. Indeed, the 

 Jewish people had narrowed, instead of widening, 

 the area covered by the term "neighbour," and 

 Christ had to interpret it in its true universality. 

 It is true, too, that the world was prepared for such 

 humanitarian teaching by the vision of a great 

 World Empire, no less than by the unifying 

 tendencies of Roman law and the utterances of 

 Stoic philosophers. And yet, when Christ enunci- 

 ated a principle as far-reaching as and much more 

 generally intelligible than either of those formulas 

 of the rival moral system of our day " Whatsoever 

 ye would that men should do to you do ye even so 

 to them " it was a new truth, and its finality is 

 beyond dispute. 



It is, perhaps, in those passages in which the 

 ancient and the modern ideals are contrasted that 

 we are least able to follow Mr. Green. Though he 

 disclaims any wish to " hold a brief for the Greek 

 philosophers against the founders of the Christian 

 Church, or for the latter against the former" 



