Five hundred years before the time of Christ Confucius taught: "What you do not like when done to yourself do not to others." Centuries before the Christian era Pittacus, Thales, Sextus, Isocrates and Aristotle taught the same. 588 What maxim does Paul attribute to Jesus? "Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive" (Acts xx, 35). These are not "the words of the Lord Jesus," but of the Pagan Epicurus, a man whose character Christians have for centuries defamed. Concerning the teachings of Jesus, Col. Thomas W. Higginson says: "When they tell me that Jesus taught a gospel of love, I say I believe it. Plato taught a gospel of love before him, and you deny it. If they say, Jesus taught that it is better to bear an injury than to retaliate, I say, yes, but so did Aristotle before Jesus was born. I will accept it as the statement of Jesus if you will admit that Aristotle said it too. I am willing that any man should come before us and say, Jesus taught that you must love your enemies, it is written in the Bible; but, if he will open the old manuscript of Diogenes Laertus, he may there read in texts that have never been disputed, that the Greek philosophers, half a dozen of them, said the same before Jesus was born." Buckle says: "That the system of morals propounded in the New Testament contained no maxim which had not been previously enunciated, and that some of the most beautiful passages in the apostolic writings are quotations from Pagan authors, is well known to every scholar.... To assert that Christianity communicated to man moral truths previously unknown, argues on the part of the asserter either gross ignorance or wilful fraud" (History of Civilization, vol. i, p. 129). John Stuart Mill says: "It can do truth no service to blind the fact, known to all who have the most ordinary acquaintance with literary history, that a large portion of the noblest and most valuable moral teaching has been the work not only of men who did not know, but of men who knew and rejected the Christian faith" (Liberty). 589 We are told that Christ manifested "a strong and enduring courage which never shrank or quailed before any danger however formidable." Is this true? It is not. When he heard that John was imprisoned, he retreated to the Sea of Galilee (Matthew iv, 12, 13); when John was beheaded, he took a ship and retired to a desert (xiv, 13); in going from Galilee to Judea, he went beyond the Jordan to avoid the Samaritans; when his brethren went up to Jerusalem he refused to accompany them for fear of the Jews (John vii, 8, 9); when the Jews took up stones to stone him he "hid himself" (viii, 59); when the Pharisees took council against him he fled (Matthew xii, 14, 16): at Gethsemane, in the agonies of fear, he prayed that the cup might pass from him; at Calvary, he frantically exclaimed, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!"