simpletons who have gone on through life with a quiet conscience
may learn suddenly, from the lips of a judge, that the custom of
the trade may be a custom of the devil. You thought it was easy to
be honest. Did you think it was easy to be just and kind and
truthful? Did you think the whole duty of aspiring man was as
simple as a horn-pipe? and you could walk through life like a
gentleman and a hero, with no more concern than it takes to go to
church or to address a circular? And yet all this time you had the
eighth commandment! and, what makes it richer, you would not have
broken it for the world!

The truth is, that these commandments by themselves are of little
use in private judgment. If compression is what you want, you have
their whole spirit compressed into the golden rule; and yet there
expressed with more significance, since the law is there
spiritually and not materially stated. And in truth, four out of
these ten commands, from the sixth to the ninth, are rather legal
than ethical. The police-court is their proper home. A magistrate
cannot tell whether you love your neighbour as yourself, but he can
tell more or less whether you have murdered, or stolen, or
committed adultery, or held up your hand and testified to that
which was not; and these things, for rough practical tests, are as
good as can be found. And perhaps, therefore, the best
condensation of the Jewish moral law is in the maxims of the
priests, 'neminem laedere' and 'suum cuique tribuere.' But all
this granted, it becomes only the more plain that they are
inadequate in the sphere of personal morality; that while they tell
the magistrate roughly when to punish, they can never direct an
anxious sinner what to do.