The moral precepts put into the Messiah's mouth are also what he might be expected to utter. The teachings of the sermon on the Mount are echoes, and not altogether awakening or inspiring echoes, of ancient ethical law. The beatitudes do not exceed in beauty of sentiment or felicity of phrase, lovely passages that gem the pages of prophet, psalmist and sage. Portions of the morality are harsh, ungracious, intemperate, almost inhuman as compared with the mellow grandeur of the older law. Several of the parables, if taken in an ethical sense, contain moral injunctions or insinuations that are quite unjustifiable; the parable, for example, of the laborers in the vineyard, the last of whom, though they have worked but one hour, receive the same compensation as the early comers, who had borne the burden and heat of the day;--the parable of the steward, which, literally construed, palliates abuse of trusts;--the parable of Dives and Lazarus, which teaches the evil lesson that felicity or infelicity hereafter is consequent on fortune or misfortune here. These and other parables are deprived of their dangerous moral tendency by being removed from the ethical category, and made to convey lessons of a different kind. Read the story of the laborers in the vineyard as intended to justify Jehovah in granting the same spiritual favors to the newly called Gentiles as to the descendants of Abraham who, from the first, answered to the call addressed to them:--read the story of the steward as conveying an explanation of the Pauline policy in making capital with the Gentiles by offering to them on easy terms the promises that the Jews showed themselves unworthy of, and rejected:--read the story of Dives and Lazarus as containing the idea that the "poor in spirit," the outcast, to whom the mansions of the Lord's house, the patrimony of Abraham had never been opened, the people who had nothing but faith,--whom even pagan dogs commiserated,--should enjoy the blessedness of the Messiah's kingdom rather than those who claimed a prescriptive right to it on the ground of descent or privilege,--and the difficulty of reconciling them with moral principle is avoided. These parables and others of like tenor, do not belong to the first layer of Messianic tradition, but to the second deposit made by the Apostle Paul.