His 24th moral is the most precious standard maxim in ethics: "Do to another what you would he should do to you, and do not unto another what you would should not be done unto you." To impress this indelibly upon the mind, as the concentrated essence of morality, he adds, "_thou needest this law alone, it is the foundation and principle of all the rest_." In his 53rd moral, he says, "Acknowledge thy benefits by return of other benefits, but never revenge injuries." This is a noble maxim when compared with that abject and slavish one of the "new will of God," which enjoins the holding up of the cheek to receive a second blow. The disciples of Confucius are yet numerous, though many thousands of years have elapsed since he lived. He instructed as well by example as by his precepts; and it would be well if his morals were taught in all the schools of Christendom, instead of dogmas and creeds which are unintelligible, inasmuch as they relate to things which have no proven existence, The German writer Boll, very justly observes that, "if Christianity be got rid of, which seems likely, men must labor not to let such absurd ideas get into the new religion of morals, which will be established on the ruins of superstition." He was alluding to the eternal tortures of those priestly indispensables called souls, and other unsightly dogmas. * To the shame of credulous and priest-degraded mankind, the present superstition of Europe hath been established, as it were, in defiance of the light of Nature, reason, common sense, and all experience; and what is still more strange and revolting, by those very means and agencies which men ought to hold most in contempt and detestation; viz., fraud, forgery, pretended miracles and prophecies, hypocrisy, avarice, tyranny, cruelty, massacres, and wars which have deluged the earth with blood, and sacrificed hundreds of millions of human beings to its frenzied demon.