The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-03-17

you only give him time enough to work 1 out his schemes.
 1 The Pharsees said We must obey the l Bible" Then in order 10 bolster up the 1 Bible they hedged it around vita a lot 1 of traditional commands of the Talmud, i Then as soon as they had made the letter 1 of the law binding they evolved lot or
 rules by which they could circumVent or i crawl around the commandments or that
 law. For instance, by the old Talnudic i low it was not right for Hebrew To
 TO farther from his doorstep on the Sab i bath day than one and three-auarter | miles, The Pharisee rigidly obeyed that law But how did he. do it? He took small stone which he placed at the ! front of his door. He called this his doorstep. Then when he wanted to make long Sabbath journey he picked up this doorstep and put it into his pocket i and went his way, carrying his doorstep with him. and of course was never away from it. Thus he was able to go as far as he wished and still keep the letter of the Sabbatlc law He obeyed the letter of the law. He broke the spirit of the Sabbatic law He strained at the Gnat
 of truth, and he swallowed the huge humpbacked camel of error
 Morally Wrong.
 As man of common sense you know
 that a man may be technically right and vet morally wrong. He may obey the 1 law of the state to the letter and yet ! be as dishonest as any criminal behlnd l the iron bars wearing the convicts | stripes. If you are conVersant With hlS- l tory, you know that gold went up to a 1 high premium during the civil war.
 short time after the civil war tax col ! lector was elected for one of the counties of Illinois. By the law of that county
 all taxes must be collected In gold. Fms [ tax collector collected all those taxes in gold, and then he paid the taxes into i the treasury of the country in currency 1 and pockoted the difference He was
 properly arrested as public defulter. The
 case was tried before competent judge
 and fury. That tax collector was acquit-
 ted on the legal technicallty that the law
 of the country did not specifically state
 that the tax collector was required to
 pay that money into the treasury in gold. 2 Legally that recreant tax collector was | an honest man. but morally he was
 thief and swindler So the Pharsees ' by legal teehnicalties cireumventeG the ! spirit of the Hebrew laws They climbed 1 over the laws. They crawled through
 the loopholes of the laws. They broke l the laws of God just the same as some
 astute citizens are breaking the laws of | their country today
 1 When the pharsaica order began to ! grow, the rabbincal leaders did not think { the Bible statements of what God wanted his people to do weer strict enough and | full enough and explicit enough in their teachings So these pharisaical leaders l or rabbs, year after year, century after | century, began to form a companion to i tine Bible. which was not so much com i mentares of the Bible as extensions of
 the Bible. They filled up their pages with | commandments which God was supposed ! to have forgotten to tell Moses and ! Joshua and Jeremiah and David and ] Ezekiel. Thus this Tamud is nothing 1 more or less than the traditions or the 1 oral sayings of the old pharsaical rabbis.
 It told the Jews what kind of clothes i they were to wear the Sabbath day. ! and how they were to cut their finger i nails. and how they were to feed their l cattle, and how they were to unite their
 ropes. 1 am literally speaking the truth about the ralmud. It is filled with child | ish trivialities and with the greatest ! amount Of unmitigated nonsense which | was ever competed between the covers 1 of any book. So with our Bible today. i They learned theologians have been at work. They have covered the leaves with
 a mass of traditions. They have evolved
 out of it's pages a conglolnerate mass of meanings which lo-year-old child ought i to have sense enough to see are not there. And instead of our opening the leaves of our sacred Bible and reading the
 simple parables of Jesus Christ and in-
 terpreting them as they ought to be in- ] terpreted we are heding our sectarian 1 church around with the sayings of theo- i logians that Christ would at once repud- ! ate if he were upon earth. The cardinal ! and essential doctrines taught in the
 Bible are two-the one, man is sinner;
 the other, Christ is Saviour. Let us | beware of traditional creeds which should have been burned up long ago in the l fires of the dark ages of sectarian strife. 1 Clinching the Argument.
 1 Now, like carpenter driving his nail 1 into board and clinchng it upon the other side, we would clinch the applca- 1 tons of this sermon. There are two | truths here which we want you to carry ! home. The one is positive; the other Is | negative. The first is this: We should i adopt the Bible as our only infallible rule l of faith and practice. When you try to ! live that Bible. will you practice its spirit
 and not simply cling to the letter of the l law? Will you do this no matter what
 problems of life you have to face? For instance, when a man lies about you and misrepresents you and says all manner
 of evil against you falsely, will you try to win that man to Jesus Christ by the law of love and not try the law of hate? Will you follow the spirit of the Bible and not the letter of the Mosaic law? VIII you show forgiveness to those who have done you a personal injury?
 But there is a negative side to this sub ject well as a positive. We must not
 dsobey any of the commands God has given. We must not suppose that the gifts we make to Christs cause or our regular attendance at church or our
 Bible reading or our prayers will cover md afa Fn, 1x-in Sf nd