first; abandons himself, and yet is preserved.  Is not this through having no selfishness?  Hereby he preserves self-interest intact.  He is not self-displaying, and therefore he shines.  He is not self-approving, and therefore he is distinguished.  He is not self-praising, and therefore he has merit.  He is not self-exalting, and therefore he stands high; and inasmuch as he does not strive, no one in all the world strives with him.  That ancient saying, ’He that humbles himself shall be preserved entire’—­oh, it is no vain utterance” (Ibid, pp. 327, 328).

Jesus is said to be pre-eminent as a moral teacher because he directed his teaching to the improvement of the heart, knowing that from a good heart a good life would flow; in Manu’s code we read:  “Action, either mental, verbal, or corporeal, bears good or evil fruit as itself is good or evil ... of that threefold action be it known in the world that the heart is the instigator” (Ibid, p. 4).  Buddha said:  “It is the heart of love and faith accompanying good actions which spreads, as it were, a beneficent shade from the world of men to the world of angels” (Ibid, p. 234).  Jesus reminded the people that the ceremonial duties of religion were small compared with “the weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy, and truth;” Manu wrote:  “To a man contaminated by sensuality, neither the Vedas, nor liberality, nor sacrifices, nor observances, nor pious austerities will procure felicity.  A wise man must faithfully discharge his moral duties, even though he dares not constantly perform the ceremonies of religion.  He will fall very low if he performs ceremonial acts only, and fails to discharge his moral duties” (Ibid, p. 3).  Exactly parallel to a saying of Jesus is one in the Saboean Book of the Law:  “Adhere so firmly to the truth that your yea shall be yea, and your nay, nay” (Ibid, p. 7).

In urging that all great moral duties were taught by pre-Christian thinkers, we do not mean that Christ took his moral sayings from the books of these great Eastern teachers; there was no necessity that he should go so far in search of them, for in the teachings of the Rabbis of his nation he found all of which he stood in need.  Many of these teachings have been preserved in the more modern Talmud, grains of wheat amid much chaff, the moral thoughts of some of the purest Jewish minds.  “Take the Talmud and study it, and then judge from what uninspired source Jesus drew much of his highest teaching.  ’Whoso looketh on the wife of another with a lustful eye, is considered as if he had committed adultery’—­(Kalah).  ’With what measure we mete, we shall be measured again’—­(Johanan).  ’What thou wouldst not like to be done to thyself, do not to others; this is the fundamental law’—­(Hillel).  ’If he be admonished to take the splinter out of his eye, he would answer, Take the beam out of thine own’—­(Tarphon).  ’Imitate God in his goodness.  Be towards thy fellow-creatures as he is towards the whole creation.  Clothe the