m, and he did not
perceive the true meaning and intent of his national religion. He made it
an end, instead of a mere means to an end. Hence, it became a mechanical
round of observances, kept up by custom, and eventually lost the power,
which it had in the earlier and better ages of the Jewish commonwealth,
of awakening the feeling of guilt and the sense of the need of a
Redeemer. Thus, in the days of our Saviour's appearance upon the earth,
the chosen guardians of this religion, which was intended to make men
humble, and feel their personal ill-desert and need of mercy, had become
self-satisfied and self-righteous. A religion designed to prompt the
utterance of the greatest of its prophets: "Woe is me! I am a man of
unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips," now
prompted the utterance of the Pharisee: "I thank Thee that I am not as
other men are."

The Jew, in the times of our Saviour and his Apostles, had thus entirely
mistaken the nature and purpose of the Old dispensation, and hence was
the most bitter opponent of the New. He rested in the formal and
ceremonial sacrifice of bulls and goats, and therefore counted the blood
of the Son of God an unholy thing. He thought to appear before Him in
whose sight the heavens are not clean, clothed in his own righteousness,
and hence despised the righteousness of Christ. In reality, he appealed
to the justice of God, and therefore rejected the religion of mercy.

But, this spirit is not confined to the Jew. It pervades the human race.
Man is naturally a legalist. He desires to be justified by his own
character and his own works, and reluctates at the thought of being
accepted upon the ground of another's merits. This Judaistic spirit is
seen wherever there is none of the publican's feeling when he said, "God
be merciful to me a sinner." All confidence in personal virtue, all
appeals to civil integrity, all attendance upon the ordinances of the
Christian religion without the exercise of the Christian's penitence and
faith, is, in reality; an exhibition of that same legal unevangelic
spirit which in its extreme form inflated the Pharisee, and led him to
tithe mint anise and cummin. Man's so general rejection of the Son of God
as suffering the just for the unjust, as the manifestation of the Divine
clemency towards a criminal, is a sign either that he is insensible of
his guilt, or else that being somewhat conscious of it he thinks to
cancel it himself.