to honor them above the Scripture, and to degrade Scripture from its lawful position. This was the state of things which our Lord found when he was upon earth. Practically, the traditions of man were everything, and the Word of God was nothing at all. Obedience to the traditions constituted true religion. Obedience to the Scriptures was lost sight of altogether.
It is a mournful fact, that Christians have far too often walked in the steps of Pharisees in this matter. The very same process has taken place over and over again. The very same consequences have resulted. Keligious observances of man's invention, have been pressed on the acceptance of Christians— observances to all appearance useful, and at all events well-meant, but observances nowhere commanded in the word of God. These very observances have by and by been enjoined with more vigor than God's own commandments, and defended with more zeal than the authority of God's own word. We need not look far for examples. The history of our own church will supply them.*
Let us beware of attempting to add anything to the word of God, as necessary to salvation. It provokes
* The persecution of the Puritans in the time of the Stuarts, on account of canons and rubrics was, in too many cases, neither more nor less than zeal for traditions. An enormous amount of zeal was expended in enforcing ronformity to the Church of England, while drunkenness, swearing, and open sin were comparatively let alone. Obedience to man-made eoclesiastical rules was required, on pain of fine or imprisonment, while open disobedience to God's ten com- mandments was overlooked. Experience supplies painful proof, that traditions once called into being are first called useful. Then they become necessary. At last they are too often made idols, and all must bow down to them, or be punished.
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God to give us over to judicial blindness. It is as good as saying that His Bible is not perfect, and that we know better than He does what is necessary for man's salvation. It is just as easy to destroy the authority of God's word by addition as by subtraction, by burying it under man's inventions as by denying its truth. The whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible, must be our rule of faith — nothing added and nothing taken away.
Finally, let us draw a broad line of distinction between those things in religion which have been devised by man, and those which are plainly commanded in God's word. What God commands is necessary to salvation. What man commands is not. What man devises may be useful and expedient for the times ; but salvation does not hinge on obedience to it. What God requires is essential to life eternal. He that wilfully disobeys it ruins his own soul.*
* The subtle way in which the Pharisees evaded the requirements of the fifth commandment, to which our Lord refers in this passage, calls for a few words of explanation.
We must remember that the Pharisees did not openly deny the obligation of the fifth commandment. In all probability they pro- fessed to attach as much importance to it as any men. And yet they contrived to make it void ! How did they effect this ?
They taught that a man might dedicate to God's service, as sacred, any part of his property which might be applied to the relief of his parents, and so discharge himself from any further expense about them. He had only to say that all his money was " corban" — that is, given over to holy purposes — and do further claim could be made upon him for his father's or mother's support. Under pretence of giving God a prior claim, he set himself free from the burden of main- taining them for ever. He did not flatly deny his duty to minister of his worldly substance to his parents' necessities. But he evaded it by setting up a human tradition, and asserting a higher call of duty, even duty to God.
The likeness between the traditions and sophistries of the Phari- sees, making void God's word under a pretended zeal for God's glory,
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