In the next place it is equally an assumption that the portrait of
Jesus is incomparable. It is now proven beyond a doubt that there is
not a single saying of Jesus, I say this deliberately, which had not
already been known both among the Jews and Pagans. [Footnote:
Sometimes it is urged by pettifogging clergymen that, while it is true
that Confucius gave the Golden Rule six hundred years before Jesus, it
was in a negative form. Confucius said, "Do not unto another what you
would not another to do unto you." Jesus said, "Do unto others," etc.
But every negative has its corresponding affirmation. Moreover, are
not the Ten Commandments in the negative? But the Greek sages gave the
Golden Rule in as positive a form as we find it in the Gospels. "And
may I do to others as I would that others should do to me," said
Plato.--Jowett Trans., V.--483. P.

Besides, if the only difference between Jesus and Confucius, the one a
God, the other a mere man, was that they both said the same thing, the
one in the negative, the other in the positive, it is not enough to
prove Jesus infinitely superior to Confucius. Many of Jesus' own
commandments are in the negative: "Resist not evil," for instance.]
And as to his life; it is in no sense superior or even as large and as
many sided as that of Socrates. I know some consider it blasphemy to
compare Jesus with Socrates, but that must be attributed to prejudice
rather than to reason.

And to the question that if Jesus be mythical, we cannot account for
the rise and progress of the Christian church, we answer that the
Pagan gods who occupied Mount Olympus were all mythical beings--mere
shadows, and yet Paganism was the religion of the most advanced and
cultured nations of antiquity. How could an imaginary Zeus, or
Jupiter, draw to his temple the elite of Greece and Rome? And if there