Note 30 — Part I

The prophets of the Old Testament had long before the birth of Jesus inveighed against the disposition among the Jews to magnify acts of worship—religious rites and ceremonies—as pleasing to God and indicative of holiness in the participant.

"To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me?—saith the Lord. I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats."

"Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies; I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth; they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them."

"Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow" (Isaiah I:11-17).

"Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God" (Micah VI:7, 8).

"For I desired mercy and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings" (Hosea VI:6).

But the Jews had not heeded the admonitions of their prophets, and, in the time of Jesus, their religion, under the dominating influence of those zealous laymen—the scribes and Pharisees—had become permeated with the dry-rot of formalism. Prayers, fastings, rites and ceremonies had become all important, like the "burnt offerings of bullocks," "the blood of bullocks," the "incense" and "vain oblations" of earlier days. "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith" (Matt. XXIII:23). Their conception of the Lord was that of the Mosaic times—a jealous Deity to be placated by sacrifices, and whose favor was to be won by external worship, and not by inward purity of heart. "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also" (Matt. XXIII:25, 26).

The simple, unceremonial religion which Jesus taught, a living force animating each act of one's daily life, nourished by secret prayers in one's chamber, manifesting itself by unobtrusive acts of mercy, not by public prayers, fastings and religious services, was the direct antipodes of the ceremonial formalism then dominant among the Jews. Jesus early recognized this antagonism, and lost no opportunity to combat this, the greatest obstacle to the spreading of His ideas. He can use no words too bitter in denouncing those whom He considers the corrupters of the true worship of God (Matt. XXIII; Mark XII:38-40; Luke XX:46, 47; XI:42-44). To persons deeply imbued with religious feeling, hypocrisy is the cardinal sin. "Ye hypocrites" is His constant term of reproach for the scribes and Pharisees.

Now, the observance of the Sabbath was the keystone in the arch of formalism which the Pharisees had erected. They had filled the day with religious ceremonies. They had surrounded it with minute restrictions and prohibitions, so that even the healing of the sick on that day was considered by them unlawful. Probably their objection to the disciples picking and eating corn was not based so much on that fact, as on the iniquity of Jesus and His disciples taking a pleasant walk through the fields and country on the Sabbath. As Macaulay said of the Puritans, they hated bear baiting, not so much because it gave pain to the bear, as because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

This Sabbath was to Jesus a travesty on the true worship of His Father, and met His instant and repeated condemnation. He intentionally and openly violated its laws, and challenged the Pharisees to defend their position. As in the case of prayer, He again defined His Father's attitude as caring nothing for these outward observances. "I will have mercy and not sacrifice" (Matt. XII:7). The weighty matters of the law are "judgment, mercy and faith" (Matt. XXIII:23). In the expressive language of the Old Testament His "soul hateth" their Sabbaths and appointed feasts and solemn assemblies. They were a "trouble" to Him and He was "weary to bear them." "When ye make many prayers, I will not hear" (Isaiah I:13, 14, 15). Jesus sums up His conception of the Sabbath in one of His pregnant sentences, "the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath" (Mark II:27; Luke VI:5).

If Jesus were on earth today, He would make our Sunday a day of cheerful rest. Children would rejoice in it, learn to love it, instead of its being to them (more formerly than now) a day of penance and gloom, with their forced attendance on a distasteful Sunday school, to study creeds and catechisms, not suited to their immature years. Attendance at "church" would be a matter of minor importance, to be determined by each one for himself. The desire to worship could be satisfied without these public assemblies, for "where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (Matt. XVIII:20).

But the significant deliberation of the day, the only one important before God, would be the marking it out as the day especially for the doing of deeds of mercy. Much more righteous in the sight of the Lord would be the man who had spent the day in hunting, fishing or other innocent recreation, but yet had one good deed to his credit, than he who had spent the whole day in religious exercises, and given his "tithe of mint and anise and cummin," but had not helped, or comforted, or made happier a single fellow human being. Jesus would say with the poet: