In regard to the moral sentiments expressed in the books of the New Testament, and believed by the majority of Christians to be peculiar to Christianity, we shall touch them but lightly, as this has already been done so frequently by many able scholars.
The moral doctrines that appear in the New Testament, even the sayings of the Sermon on the Mount and the Lord's Prayer, are found with slight variation, among the Rabbins, who have certainly borrowed nothing out of the New Testament.
Christian teachers have delighted to exhibit the essential superiority of Christianity to Judaism, have quoted with triumph the maxims that are said to have fallen from the lips of Jesus, and which, they surmised, could not be paralleled in the elder Scriptures, and have put the least favorable construction on such passages in the ancient books as seemed to contain the thoughts of evangelists and apostles. A more ingenious study of the Hebrew law, according to the oldest traditions, as well as its later interpretations by the prophets, reduces these differences materially by bringing into relief sentiments and precepts whereof the New Testament morality is but an echo.
There are passages in Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, even tenderer in their humanity than anything in the Gospels. The preacher from the Mount, the prophet of the Beatitudes, does but repeat with persuasive lips what the law-givers of his race proclaimed in mighty tones of command. Such an acquaintance with the later literature of the Jews as is really obtained now from popular sources, will convince the ordinarily fair mind that the originality of the New Testament has been greatly over-estimated.
"To feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, bury the dead, loyally serve the king, forms the first duty of a pious man and faithful subject,"
is an abstract from the Egyptian "Book of the Dead," the oldest Bible in the world.
Confucius, the Chinese philosopher, born 551 B. C., said:
"Obey Heaven, and follow the orders of Him who governs it. Love your neighbor as yourself. Do to another what you would he should do unto you; and do not unto another what you would should not be done unto you; thou only needest this law alone, it is the foundation and principle of all the rest. Acknowledge thy benefits by the return of other benefits, but never revenge injuries."[415:1]
The following extracts from Manu and the Maha-bharata, an Indian epic poem, written many centuries before the time of Christ Jesus,[415:2] compared with similar sentiment contained in the books of the New Testament, are very striking.