The first instance in which the evangelists bring Jesus forward as a moral teacher is in the Sermon on the Mount. This discourse is supposed by Christians to be the masterpiece of wisdom and deep spiritual insight. While Matthew gives it as a complete discourse, Mark and Luke intersperse the substance of the sermon throughout their Gospels; which is strong presumptive proof that it was not delivered as a connected discourse. Like the book of Proverbs, it seems to be a collection of the moral sayings of former times, many of which can be pointed out, with slight verbal alterations, in the writings of pagan authors and of more modern Jews of the Hillel school. In fact, there is nothing in the sermon which had not been taught by many others a long time before, while there is much that is absurd and impracticable, not to say untrue and unjust. Even the deep spirituality involved in recognizing the spirit and intent of the law can be paralleled by several passages in Buddhistic scriptures. The so-called “Golden Rule” was announced by Confucius as an axiom nearly five centuries before the Christian era, both in its positive and its negative form, while the same maxim is laid down in most choice and beautiful language by Isocrates, Aristotle, Sextus, Pittacus, Thales, and many others from three to six centuries before Christ. The same is true of the Lord’s Prayer, though it is often asserted that Jesus first taught the “Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.” This is not true. The “Lord’s Prayer” is found in the ancient Jewish rituals, and is entitled a “Prayer to the Father,” and the expression “Our Father who art in heaven” is common to many, if not all, nations and religions. While there are several things in the Sermon on the Mount truly beautiful, there is nothing that is strictly _original_; there are many sayings which show a great lack of knowledge, and that are positively impracticable and immoral in their tendency. No Christian tries to keep these sayings. It would lead to vagabondism and would convert a nation into a crowd of tramps. It would be positively immoral to obey them. If Jesus did not _intend_ that his teachings should be taken according to the common sense of the words used, why did he not say so? What is language for but to express one’s meaning? So far from teaching the non-resistance of evil, in other places he runs into the extreme of teaching revenge. (See Luke 10:10-12; Matt. 10:14, 15; Mark 6:11.) He also sanctions the most gross injustice. He commends the unjust steward (Luke 16:5-8), saying that he had “done wisely” in cheating his employer by compounding with his creditors, and advises his hearers to make “friends” of the “mammon of unrighteousness.”