mecum" (op. cit., pp. 291-2). We find in this book such precepts as the following:
"Love ye one another from the heart; and if a man sin against thee, speak peaceably to him, and in
thy soul hold not guile; and if he repent and confess, forgive him. But if he deny it, do not get into
a passion with him, lest catching the poison from thee he take to swear. ing, and so then sin
doubly.... And if he be shameless and persist in wrong-doing, even so forgive him from the
heart, and leave to God the avenging."
Dr. Charles is of opinion that Christ must have been acquainted with this passage. Again we find:
"Love the Lord and your neighbour."
"Love the Lord through all your life, and one another with a true heart."
"I loved the Lord; likewise also every man with all my heart." These are to be compared with
Matthew XXII, 37-39. There is a reprobation of all hatred in "The Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs"; for instance:
"Anger is blindness, and does not suffer one to see the face of any man with truth."
"Hatred, therefore, is evil; for it constantly mateth with lying." The author of this book, as might
be expected, holds that not only the Jews, but all the gentiles, will be saved.
Christians have learnt from the Gospels to think ill of Pharisees, yet the author of this book was a
Pharisee, and he taught, as we have seen, those very ethical maxims which we think of as most
distinctive of Christ's preaching. The explanation, however, is not difficult. In the first place, he
must have been, even in his own day, an exceptional Pharisee; the more usual doctrine was, no
doubt, that of the Book of Enoch. In the second place, we know that all movements tend to ossify;
who could infer the principles of Jefferson from those of the D.A.R.? In the third place, we know,
as regards the Pharisees in particular, that their devotion to the Law, as the absolute and final
truth, soon put an end to all fresh and living thought and feeling among them. As Dr. Charles says:
"When Pharisaism, breaking with the ancient ideals of its party, committed itself to political
interests and movements, and concurrently therewith surrendered itself more and more wholly to
the study