European writers excelled the Asiatic seers and miracle-workers. It has been persistently claimed that both love and justice are exclusively biblical virtues. We regret to say that this is another untruth, the extensive circulation of which was deemed necessary to protect the bible against its rivals. _Love is the foundation of the law.--Cicero. Sympathy is what distinguishes us from brutes.--Juvenal. The love of all to all.--Pythagoras. He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it. It is never right to return an injury. -- Plato. We should be good to our enemy and make him our friend. -- Cleobulus. Ask thyself daily to how many ill-minded persons, thou hast shown a kind disposition.--Antoninus. To the very end of life we will be in action, we will not cease to labor for the common weal, to help individuals, to give aid even to our enemies.--Seneca._ Moreover, the motives which the philosophers held forth were very much more creditable to human nature than the rewards, either here or in the next world, which the bible held out as inducements to action. _What more dost thou want when thou hast done a man a service than the fact of having done it? Art thou not content to have done something conformable to thy nature, and dost thou seek to be paid for it, as if the eye demanded a recompense for seeing, or the foot for walking?--Seneca._ * * De Benef ix, 41. If so sweet and sane, so large and pure a sentiment could be found in any part of the Word of God, I shall forever after keep my mouth closed. The servitude of man, not the service of man, is the theme of the bible; and if Jesus said that the charities should be done in secret, it was because that was the best way to secure a public reward. "And your father which seeth in secret," said Jesus, "will reward you openly." The secrecy recommended was a matter of policy. "Reward" is the constant refrain in the bible. Promises of territory, lands, cattle, jewelry, oil and wine, women and girls, in the Old Testament; and in the new, thrones, crowns, golden streets, harps, robes, and endless life beyond the clouds, are the inducements held out to the devotee.