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, or to prevent it from being classed among other moralities, as being a mixture of good and bad, and, therefore, not to be taken as an, unerring guide, being like them, all FALLIBLE.

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INDEX TO SECTION III.  OF PART II.

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INDEX OF BOOKS USED.

Bhagavat Gita, in Anthology...406
Bradlaugh, The Bible:  what it is...397
   " What Did Jesus Teach?...414
Buddha, in Anthology...403, 405
   " Wheel of the Law...408

Cahen, Levitique...398
Colenso, Pentateuch and Book of Joshua...396
Confucius, in Anthology...403, 404, 408

Dante, Inferno...403
Dhammapada, in Anthology...403

Gouldburn, Thoughts on Personal Religion...411

Kalisch, Leviticus...399, 400, 401
Katha-Chari, in Anthology...407
Kwan-yin, in Anthology...407

Lao-Tsze, in Anthology...403, 404

Mahabharata, in Muir...410
Manu, in Anthology...404, 405, 406, 419
Mencius, in Anthology...407

Prayer Book, Art. vi. vii....395

Ramayana, in Anthology...407

Sabaean Book of the Law, in Anthology...404, 405
Shelley, Queen Mab...402
She-King, in Anthology...407
Statutes, 9 and 10 William III. cap. 32...395

Talmud, quoted by Besant...405

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INDEX OF SUBJECTS.