Note 11 — Chapter IX · CONCLUSION

Presumably the doctrines in question are those of mutual love, of forgiveness of enemies, of doing as we would be done by. Concerning the gospel doctrine of reward the Professor makes a disclaimer; and concerning the doctrine that God cares for men as for the lilies and the birds he pronounces that it is “to-day not merely untrue: it is not even religious in the deepest sense of the term.”11 It is not then clear that he would acclaim the doctrine that to help the distressed is to succour the Lord. In any case, the detailed religious prescription of beneficence was not merely a Jewish maxim: it was an article of Egyptian religion;12 and it can hardly be in respect of such teaching that the Professor affirms a new “influence on the lives of mankind in general.”