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the spirit of religion who believe that the instruments of religion are sacred, instead of religion itself. They who look upon days, and ecclesiastical ceremonies, and garments, and ordinances as holy, and worship them, are idolaters. They have set up right in the threshold of God's church the worship of forms and ceremonies, instead of the service of true religion.

You do not

And if it was the nature of the Pharisee to be selfish, to leave humanity out of his religion, and to worship the instruments of religion, and not the thing itself, you may be sure that Phariseeism is not dead. need to go to the New Testament to see where Pharisees are. They sit in It is one of those methods in which our churches. They are in all sects. the imperfection of human nature manifests itself when it is acting in the direction of religion.

If this is a fair description of the Pharisees, they were stern, earnest men, seeking to reform and exalt human society, in the main, by a rigorous use of secular and ecclesiastical forces. They were not without many good qualities; they were not without much that was praiseworthy; but they failed in the essential points of spirituality and love. And as these were the foundation qualities of God's nature and government, they failed at the very pivotal point. It was in the presence of these rulers that Christ enacted the scenes that are recorded, as having been enacted during the three official of his life.

years

• ...

The question which I propose briefly to answer is, "how must such a being as Christ have appeared to these men, such as they were?” There is such a thing, you know, as a higher class in morality; there is such a thing as an aristocracy of virtue, or supposed virtue; and there is no aristocracy and no monarchy that is more imperious, more domineer.They said, ing, more tyrannical, than ecclesiastical aristocracy. “There is a man of great power, and we must see whether we can use him, and whether he will be on our side." The question in their mind was not this: "Is he truer than we are? Is he better than we are? Will his truth make mankind better, and the world happier?" Their thought was this — and it is not very different from the thought of men now-a-days: "If this man is with us, we are going in for him; if not, we are going against him." The syllogism was, "God has made us the instrument of enlightening this people. Therefore, it is essential that we should be kept in authority and power. And if this man goes with us, he goes with religion, and we accept him. If he goes against us, he goes against religion, and we reject him." Now, churches, and seminaries, and Christian institutions of They are hands with which all kinds, are feet with which religion walks. it helps itself. They are instruments which God employs in carrying it on. But when a comparison is made between institutions and ordinances and the things which they serve, there is no hesitation as to which is superior.

But the Pharisees said of Christ: "If he goes with our institutions, if he goes with Jewry, he is right; if he does not, he is wrong." And because ... The light he did not go with them they turned against him. came upon them in vain. They did not understand it. God was presented

to them as a spirit, and they did not accept him. . . . . . And he charged them with blindness

see these things.

and rightly too, because they could not

But they did see and feel what to them was more to the point - that' Christ's influence was against them; that he stood in their path; that if he increased they would decrease: and that if the people were to be taught by him they could no longer teach them. In other words, they were men of a party. Here was an individual that refused to join their party, and did things which had a tendency to disintegrate and destroy that party; and they turned against him.

How do men act under such circumstances now? Is it strange to see a party turn against a man because he does not go with them, without any consideration of his character, or of what the result of his teachings would be? The Pharisees were a party in religion; and when they found that Christ would not train with them, they eschewed him. For one of two things a party must do win or kill; and it will be so as long as the carnal element is predominant in the world.

Let us see, then, how, in some points, Christ's independent spiritual career traversed party considerations, and how he went to his crucifixion. ... The charge against him was that he ate with publicans and sinners, and that he sat down with them. There is a great difference, you know, between preaching to people, and going with people. He might have preached to publicans at appointed times and places, and he would have had small audiences; but he went where the publicans and sinners were; and he sat down with them, and ate with them, and they found him an agreeable companion. And he was pure enough and noble enough to bear the test to which he was subjected in so doing. And when he was. charged with it as an offense contrary to the Jewish custom, he declared "I do it as a physician goes among the sick. They need me and I go to them because they need me-not because I need them." But this was very offensive to the purest of the Pharisees.

More than that, he taught the common people not in rabbinical phrase, but in the vernacular. You will take notice that a minister who joins himself to a sect, and avows that it is his purpose to exalt that sect, is permitted by that sect to speak in any way he pleases, and as far as he pleases, so that all the benefit inures to it. But let a man refuse to belong to any sect, let him claim brotherhood with all sects so far as they are Christ's, and let him teach in any other way than that of the catechism and pulpit, let. him preach the great truths of religion so that the common people shall hear him gladly, and what is the impression that is produced but this: that: the man is seeking vulgar applause and popularity, or else that he is going out of the way, and is a dangerous man? The established sects do not like to have the Gospel preached to men except in the language that they are accustomed to use.

Now, Christ would not use rabbinical language in his teaching. He did not speak as the Jews did. But when he taught the common people, alli

said: "This man speaks with authority." What does that mean? Weight. He spoke right home to their consciences, and that is always speaking with weight. He brought the Gospel into their houses, into their business, into their dispositions, into their very superstitions. He brought it into their religion. That was a strange place to bring it, it is true; but he brought it there. It was his habit to preach the Gospel, not professionally, but personally, so as to make it a Gospel to the common people. And it was this that was offensive to the Jews. It was against their party.

More than that, the practical superiority which he gave to truth or principle over usages and institutions was offensive to them. It was an indirect assault upon them. For the Pharisees were men that believed in regularity, and order, and subordination, and discipline. The Pharisee was superlatively the model conservative of the world. He did not disdain growth; but, after all, his sympathies and feelings, first and mainly, inclined them to the policy of taking care of what you have already obtained. It was holding on to the past that they were thinking of. Not that they ignored advancement, but the key-note of their life was conservation. Therefore, when they saw a man of great power and extraordinary gifts disseminating principles which did not belong to their theological system, and raising moral tides which could not but work mischief to them, they felt that he was making not only a personal, but an ecclesiastical attack upon them. And, as conservative religious men, they thought they were bound to oppose him.

For example, was there anything more sacred to them than sacrifice ? The idea of sacrifice was to them what the idea of atonement is to orthodox men, now-a-days, who hold it to be the centre of the Christian arch. Sacrifice was never despised by Christ, but relatively he undervalued it. The idea of sacrifice among the Jews had taken precedence of humanity, justice and right; and Christ came and said: "If thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." What does it mean but this: "Do not think that sacrifice to God is the highest religious duty." You may offer up sacrifice in such a way that it shall be utterly offensive to God. In other words, sacrifice depends for its goodness on preceding moral qualities. A principle is higher than the ordinance which you take to exhibit that principle. The life of religion is in the soul first; and then come the instruments by which you develop that life.

The same is true of the Sabbath-day. It is remarkable that almost every mention of the Sabbath day in which Christ expresses any opinion respecting it was seemingly adverse to its sacredness. And some have supposed that Christ was opposed to the Sabbath day. But he was not. The Sabbath day had become an oppressive day to the common people. It had lost its peculiar fragrance and sweetness as a voluntary religious day. And Christ, happening to meet it at the point of its oppression, put the duty of love in religion higher than any ordinance. He only undervalued the Sabbath as contrasted with the object for which it was ordained. It was the

outside ordinance as contrasted with the inside spirit that led Christ to denounce it.

These are instances of Christ's attempt to put the truth higher than the ordinance or usage by which that truth was expressed. The result was that those who felt themselves condemned, those who felt their methods of teaching religion set aside, those who felt that there was a tendency to unsettle the minds of their hearers, did not hesitate to declare that he was an infidel.

... The whole course of Christ was so influential that the Pharisees could not let him alone. Such was the force with which he taught and moved in life, he thrust himself upon them in such a way at every turn, he irritated and aggravated them so, that they were in the condition of many men in your day, who have said of reformers that were laboring to correct the evils of society: "Why will not these men let these things alone? Why are they always agitating them?" Christ made Jerusalem hot for the Pharisees. The public mind had become filled with those new-fangled notions about morality and religion which he promulgated; and the Pharisees wondered why, if he was a minister of the true religion, he would stir up the people so.

That is not all. Christ was the most unpractical man that ever lived; and yet the most practical. He could not be used by the Pharisees for their purposes. He could not live simply for the present, as they did. He was living for something beyond. . . . . . They were Jews. He belonged to the human kind. They sought immediate success. tablishing the foundations of that kingdom in which dwelleth righteousness. He was esThey were for now and for the transient. He was for the future and the stable. And how could they use such a man as that? He was larger than they were; he saw something more than their plans contemplated; he was forever laboring for a more resplendent end than they had conceived of; and they could not use him.

Christ was, lastly, a sublime radical- and that was the secret of the matter. "How dare you," one will say to me, "apply such a term to Christ?" Because my glorious Master is one that has got used to wearing ignominious terms; and any term of ignominy that is made such by contempt of the higher against the lower I take and put upon the brow of Christ. Another thorn it may be, but it is one that brings blood for salvation. And I declare that Christ was the first and the sublime radical. "Now also," says the New Testament, speaking of the coming of Christ, "the axe is laid unto the root of the trees." He struck at the very principle of things. What is radical but a word derived from radix, which means root? He was a rootman. He came right at the worm at the root of the trees. A physician that, instead of attempting to palliate a difficulty, deals. strictly with the organic lesion, is a radical. In morals, the man that does. not endeavor to smooth over the surface of things, but asks what is the fundamental cause of wrong, and then attacks that cause, is a radical. And Christ was declared to be a radical. The axe was laid at the root of

things. And from the days of Christ to this, the men that have been the most known and felt, and the longest felt in the world, have been men that passing over compromises and petty ways of settling difficulties, have struck the foundation causes of things, and insisted upon having health and right, and refused to train with men that were in favor of letting matters ake their own course. And they have been, like their Master, radicals and therefore reformers; cursed while they lived, and worshipped when they were dead; thorns in the side of parties, and crucified by them, and held up as the martyrs and heroes of their age by the next generation.

The men that prove to be the regenerators of mankind begin as Christ did, despised and subjected to obloquy by the laws and accredited sources of government. All men that hold in their hands the supposed authorities of religion, turn themselves against these on-coming men of power, who, though they are uncomely, shape the foundations of the New Jerusalem, which are to be laid, not as the foundations of human institutions are, of hay, wood, clay and stubble, but of precious stones, in immortal principles of truth, which shall never pass away. . . . . . They that build on purity and rectitude, are steadfast and safe, but they that build on arrangements, on nice and cunning devices, on compromises, in order to dodge duty, are liable at any moment to be overthrown and destroyed. We have been living for years and years in a period in which men have sacrificed principle for the sake of quieting the community, for the sake of gaining peace, for the sake of settling in an easy manner questions which God Almighty was determined should not be settled till they were settled right. We have been living for years and years in a period in which men have exhausted all their ingenuity to suppress those Christian influences which have been at work in the world. And we have had the church and religion against Christ in his exponents in the land. We have had the law against Christ. Government and commerce have been against Christ. And they have all joined in the cry: "Crucify him! Crucify him!" And men said, "Now we will have peace." But did you get it? Did you get it in the Church? Did you get it in the State. . . .

Now, having gone through five bloody years, we come again to great questions which stand petitioning at our doors, and God says: "Settle them on principles of justice and rectitude, and you shall have peace." But the whole nation are asking, “Ought we not, after so long a time, to arrange so as to have peace?" And men are saying, "Why insist upon such radical ideas? Why not accept more temperate views?" And those views which they call temperate, and which they are urging us to adopt, are views that have lies in them. And I stand again and say, Truth has no revolution in it. Right has no change in it. Justice is always safe and sure.