erve, the Saviour gives us no encouragement to depend
upon those helps that tradition might bring us. On the contrary, His
language shows how dangerous He felt the influence of tradition to be.
How are we to account for this? His strongest denunciations are reserved
for the Pharisaic party; and yet a historian would describe them as in
many respects the best elements of Jewish life. They were earnest,
patriotic, religious, many of them wise and holy men; but their judgment
was held in bondage by the influence of tradition, and in this lies the
cardinal defect of their life. They had set up between their souls and
the spirit of God a sort of graven image of ritualistic observances, and
traditional usages and interpretations. They depended on externals, or
what came to them from the past or from the outer world, and their eyes
were blinded, and their hearts hardened against every new revelation.

Thus they stand before Christ, blocking His path, the very embodiment of
that power which closes the soul against those inspiring and purifying
influences that come from direct communion with God. They block the
Saviour's path, because this personal communion is just what He
represents to us--the direct revelation of the Spirit of God in man. He
comes to reveal the Father to each of us, and to make us feel the
presence of the Divine creative Spirit in every separate human life; and
till we feel this personal illumination we have not realised the
manifestation of the Son of God. But the Pharisee with his continual
reference to tradition, his multiplication of external observances, and
elaborate ritual, his reliance upon usage and external authority, knows
little or nothing of the personal illumination by the direct influence of
the Spirit of God upon our spirit. Hence this absolute and fundamental
contrast between Jesus and the Pharisees. They represent two opposing
principles in life. And it is this that gives such intensity to the
words He addressed to them: "Ye have made the word of God of none effect
through your traditions"; and it is a universal warning--never out of
date.

If the spirit of traditional usage and influence holds the citadel of a
man's life, the spirit of Christian progress cannot gain an entrance.

That is the lesson which the Saviour presses upon our attention by His
denunciation of the Pharisaic usage, habit, and attitude, and it is
hardly possible to overestimate the importance of the lesson, b