the other duties of true religion. The reference to "the
weightier matters of the law" may have been an allusion to the
rabbinical classification of "light" and "heavy" requirements under the
law; though it is certain the Lord approved no such arbitrary
distinctions. To omit the tithing of small things, such as mint leaves,
and sprigs of anise and cummin, was to fall short in dutiful observance;
but to ignore the claims of judgment, mercy, and faith, was to forfeit
one's claim to blessing as a covenant child of God. By a strong simile,
the Lord stigmatized such inconsistency as comparable to one's
scrupulous straining at a gnat while figuratively willing to gulp down a
camel.[1139]

"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."[1140] Pharisaic scrupulosity in the ceremonial cleansing of
platters and cups, pots and brazen vessels, has been already alluded to.
Cleanliness the Lord in no wise depreciated; His shafts of
disapprobation were aimed at the hypocrisy of maintaining at once
outward spotlessness and inward corruption. Cups and platters though
cleansed to perfection were filthy before the Lord if their contents had
been bought by the gold of extortion, or were to be used in pandering to
gluttony, drunkenness or other excess.

"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto
whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within
full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also
outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy
and iniquity." It was an awful figure, that of likening them to
whitewashed tombs, full of dead bones and rotting flesh. As the dogmas
of the rabbis made even the slightest contact with a corpse or its
cerements, or with the bier upon which it was borne, or the grave in
which it had been lain, a cause of personal defilement, which only
ceremonial washing and the offering of sacrifices could remove, care was
taken to make tombs conspicuously white, so that no person need be
defiled through ignorance of proximity to such unclean places; and,
moreover, the periodical whitening of sepulchres was regarded as a
memorial act of honor to the dead. But even as no amount of care or
degree o