and you shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light" (Mt. xi. 28-30).
While in tenderness and sympathy for human sorrow Christ resembles Buddha, in the nature of his moral precepts he sometimes resembles Confucius. The plain duties of man towards his fellow-man are inculcated in the same spirit by both, while in Buddhism it is generally the most extreme and often prodigious examples of charity or self-sacrifice that are held up to admiration. Buddhism, moreover, teaches by means of long stories; Confucius and Jesus by means of short maxims. To a certain extent, indeed, Jesus combines both methods, the first being represented in his parables; but these are much simpler, and go far more directly to the point, than the complicated narratives of the Buddhistic canon. On the whole, we may safely say that Jesus is certainly not surpassed by either of these rival prophets, and that in some respects, if not in all, he surpasses both.
Another comparison is commonly made, and may be just touched on here. It is that between the Hebrew prophet and the Athenian sage, "who," in the words of Byron, "lived and died as none can live or die." Without fully endorsing this emphatic opinion of the poet, we may admit that Socrates is not unworthy to stand beside Jesus in the foremost rank of the heroes of our race. He shares with the prophets who have been already named the inspiring sense of a divine mission which he is bound to fulfill. At all hazards and under all conditions he will carry on the special and peculiar work which the divine voice commands him to do. And this plenary belief in his own inspiration is not accompanied, as sometimes happens, by mental poverty. Intellectually his superiority to Jesus cannot be disputed. It is apparent in the very manner of his instruction. Socrates could never have enunciated the truths he had to tell in that authoritative tone which is appropriate to the religious teacher. Whatever knowledge he thinks it possible to acquire at all must be acquired by reasoning and inquiry; and must be tested by comparison of our own mental condition with that of others. Nothing must be assumed but what is granted by the hearer. Socrates would have thought that there was little gained by the mere dogmatic assertion of moral or spiritual
