finally judge the world. Because life furnished many situations not dealt
with in the written law, there was need of its authoritative
interpretation, in order that ignorance might not cause a man to
transgress. These interpretations constituted an oral law which
practically superseded the written code, and they were handed down from
generation to generation as "the traditions of the fathers." The existence
of this oral law made necessary a company of scribes and lawyers whose
business it was to know the traditions and transmit them to their pupils.
These scribes were the teachers of Israel, the leaders of the Pharisees,
and the most highly revered class in the community. Pharisaism at its
beginning was intensely earnest, but in the time of Jesus the earnest
spirit had died out in zealous formalism. This was the inevitable result
of their virtual substitution of the written law for the living God. Their
excessive reverence had banished God from practical relation to the daily
life. They held that he had declared his will once for all in the law. His
name was scrupulously revered, his worship was cultivated with minutest
care, his judgment was anticipated with dread; but he himself, like an
Oriental monarch, was kept far from common life in an isolation suitable
to his awful holiness. By a natural consequence conscience gave place to
scrupulous regard for tradition in the religion of the scribes. The chief
question with them was not, Is this right? but, What say the elders? The
soul's sensitiveness of response to God's will and God's truth was lost in
a maze of traditions which awoke no spontaneous Amen in the moral nature,
consequently there was frequent substitution of reputation for character.
The Pharisees could make void the command, Honor thy father, by an
ingenious application of the principle of dedication of property to God
(Mark vii. 8-13), and thus under the guise of scrupulous regard for law
discovered ways for legal disregard of law. Their theory of religion gave
abundant room for a piety which made broad its phylacteries and lengthened
its prayers, while neglecting judgment, mercy, and the love of God.