n as simple and unsupported by appeal to
the elders. Jesus and John both revived the method of the older prophets,
and it is in large measure due to this that the people distinguished them
clearly from their ordinary teachers, and held them both to be prophets.
One thing involved in this authoritative method was a frank appeal to the
conscience of men. So completely had the scribes substituted memory of
tradition for appeal to the simple sense of right, that they were utterly
dazed when Jesus undertook to settle questions of Sabbath observance and
ceremonial cleanliness by asking his hearers to use their religious common
sense, and consider whether a man is not much better than a sheep, or
whether a man is not defiled rather by what comes out of his mouth than by
what enters into it (Matt. xii. 12; Mark vii. 15). Jesus was for his
generation the great discoverer of the conscience, and for all time the
champion of its dignity against finespun theory and traditional practice.
All his teaching has this quality in greater or less degree. It appears
when by means of the parable of the Good Samaritan he makes the lawyer
answer his own question (Luke x. 25-37), when he bids the multitude in
Jerusalem "judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous
judgment" (John vii. 24), when he asks his inquisitors in the temple whose
image and superscription the coin they used in common business bears (Mark
xii. 16). His whole work in Galilee was proof of his confidence that in
earnest souls the conscience would be his ally, and that he could impress
himself on them far more indelibly than any sign from heaven could enforce
his claim.

232. Jesus was not only independent of the traditions of the scribes, he
was also very free at times with the letter of the Old Testament. When by
a word he "made all meats clean" (Mark vii. 19), he set himself against
the permanent validity of the Levitical ritual. When the Pharisees pleaded
Moses for their authority in the matter of divorce, Jesus referred them
back of Moses to the original constitution of mankind (Matt. xix. 3-9).
His general attitude to the Sabbath was not only opposed to the traditions
of the scribes, it also disregarded the Old Testament conception of the
Sabbath as an institution. Yet Jesus took pains to declare that he came
not to set aside the old but to fulfil it (Matt. v. 17). The contrasts
which he draws between things said to them of old and his new teachings
(Matt. v