The Pulpit Commentary — Matthew — Volume 2 — Section 113

of God of none effect. You put aside his commandment that you may keep your owr. tradition, You accept as the important things such trifles as these, while the truly great things of the Law you utterly neglect." But the evil of Pharisaism lay even deeper than this. The Pharisees were not mere formalists; those of Paul's type could honestly say that, touching the Law, they were blameless. Their mistake was that • they thought their good actions made them good men. Our Lord came to give men clear perception and hold of the real distinction between good and evil. Men were not to be allowed to suppose the distinction between good men and bad was a sliaht one, that could be bridged over by a few acquired habits or formal observances. They were to be made to see that the distinction was deep as humanity itself; that their goodness must be one that would be eternal; not being the result of a superficial imitation, or attempt to satisfy the expectations er win the applause of men, but springing from the man's inmost self. To illustrate the principle that respect to human tradition tends to disrespect of God's Law, our Lord cites an instance well known to them. Under the guise of extra devotion to God, a man could evade the first of human duties by merely saying over anything he wished to keep, "Corban"-" It is devoted." This was monstrous, and the system which encouraged it manifestly "a plant which his Father had not planted." The principle which lies at the root of our Lord's teaching here he enounces in the words, "There is nothing from without a man that, entering into him, can defile him; but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile a man." We may apply this in two ways. 1. To those who, under the gwlse of greater reli,qiousness than that of other men, evade the common duties of life; who, in defending some trifle that hangs to the skirt of religion, do not scruple to transgress the broad laws of justice, truth, and charity which form its life. Every age has had its representatives of the Pharisees, the defenders of traditional religion, who have shown the same unscrupulousness and intolerance in defence of what they suppose to be religious truth. And when we consider the damage done to religion by such persons, and the difficulty of convincing them of their error, we do not wonder that no class was so frequently and so unsparingly denounced by our Lord. In every religious community there is a tendency to place the keeping of certain observances that are added to the Law above the Law itself; to consider these extra things as the marks of a religious man, and to call a man religious or irreligious according as he does or does not things that have as little to do with fundamental morality as the washing of hands before eating. We are apt, all of us, to pay attention to the means rather than to what is the great end of all religion ; to wash our hands instead of our hearts. "These things ye ought to have done, but not to have left the others undone." All these things that are peculiar marks of religious people are good, but become enormous evils when out of proportion to the essential matters of the Law-of morality, of justice and truth between man and man, of love to God and to our fellows. Or: 2. We may consider the principle as enouncing the general truth that man's life is determined in all respects by what is within, not by what ill without. Our Lord was sinless, not because he was not in circumstances of temptation, but because there was nothing on which temptation could fix. We lay the blame of our low spiritual condition, our actual falls, on our circumstances. But why is it these circumstances tempt us? Others pass through them without peril. The blame is within. We must seek for the remedy, also, within. The change that determines our destiny ls a change in ourselves.-D. Vers. 21-28.-.77ie Syro-Phmniclan woman. The peculiarity of the incident here related is not the cure wrought, but the refusal with which the mother's petition was at first met. It did not need a sympathy such as our Lord's to urge him to dismiss this foul intrusion into the innocent and happy days of childhood; it did not need his hatred of evil to urge him to rebuke the Satanic malice, which could exult in attacking, not the nged sinner, but the pure child who knew nothing of the sources of disease and had no arguments to resist its terror. Who would not count it one of the best plea- sures to be able to bring n suffering child from pain and terror to the sane and healthy joy of childhood? But our Lord answered never a word, aud when urged to speak, ~is speech was more discouraging than silence. What is it, then, .,hich justifies t11\i1 couduct? It may have been his meaning from the first to grant the petition, and he 116 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW. [ea, xv. 1-39.