[473] A pagan as well as a Jewish commonplace. Cp. Jeremiah xxi, 8; Hesiod, Works and Days, 285 sq.; Xenophon, Memorabilia, ii, 1; Persius, Sat. iii, 56. Persius followed Pythagoras, who taught that the ways of virtue and vice were like the thin and thick lines of the letter Y. This is the origin of the Christian formula of the broad and the narrow path. The conception of "the right way" is found among the ancient Persians. Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums, i, 539 (§ 448). [474] Cp. Levit. xix, 18; Matt. xxii, 37-39. [475] Cp. Tobit iv, 15; Matt. vii, 12. Hillel (Talmud, Sabbath, 306) puts the rule, as here, in the sane negative form, which is also the Chinese. The gospel form is less rational. The sentiment is the first principle of morals, and is common to all religions and all races. [476] Cp. Matt. v, 44; Prov. xxv, 21; Talmud refs. in C.M. 406; and Test. of Twelve Patr. Dan. iii, iv; Gad, iii-vi. Canon Spence notes that the resemblance between the Testaments and the Didachê is "very marked." Note that in the Revised Version the text in Matthew is cut down--a recognition of tampering, in imitation of Luke vi, 27-8. [477] Gr. "the nations" = "the Gentiles." Here, as elsewhere, we render by an English idiom, which gives the real force of the original. It will be observed that the compilers of the first gospel (v, 46) substitute "tax-gatherers" for the original, by way of applying the discourse to Jews in Palestine, where the tax-gatherers represented foreign oppression. [478] A probable interpolation. [479] Cp. Lament. iii, 30, and the pagan parallels cited by Mr. McCabe, Sources of Mor. of Gospels, pp. 229, 231. [480] This clause, which is not in Matthew, is intelligible only as an exhortation to Jews in foreign lands. The reference to 1 Cor. vi, 1, cannot make it plausible as a Christian utterance. [481] This is otherwise translated by the Rev. Mr. Heron, Church of the Sub-Apostolic Age, p. 16, thus: "the Father wisheth men to give to all from their private portion"; and by Dr. Taylor, Teaching, 1886, p. 122, thus: "the Father wills that to all men there be given of our own free gifts." [482] Cp. Acts xx, 35. That passage probably derives from this, and loses point in the transference. [483] Mr. Heron renders this "under discipline," because the early Church had no prison for its backsliders. Quite so. The reference is to Pagan prisons, and the warning is to Jewish beggars. The Greek phrase, en synochê, here clearly refers to a prison, though in Luke xxi, 25, it is rendered "distress" and in 2 Cor. ii, 4, "anguish." Cp. Josephus, 8 Ant. iii, 2. Canon Spence, who translates "being in sore straits," offers the alternative "coming under arrest." [484] Cp. Ecclesiasticus, xii, 1 sq. It will be observed that the concluding clause modifies the earlier precept of indiscriminate giving. It may be an addition. [485] A more developed teaching is found in the Testaments of the Patriarchs, as above cited.