The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1907-03-15

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| So what did they do? They withdre
themselves just as far as possible frol
| associating with these sinful Babyl
mans. They did what the Puritan
did when they were exiles in Hollan,
They did what the foreign mission;
ries are accustomed to do amid til
awful customs of the heather land
] They keep their children within the
own homes as far as possible. An
when their boys and girls grow too bi
z to be longer kept clean from the COZ
, Eliminating immoral influences of tn
. east they send them back home to b
educated in the American homes an
American institutions. "Oh," said a
American missionary some years ag
: to me in India 1.-THE hardest burdel
which a missionary has to bear is thi
separation from his children. Blu
what can a missionary do? l canno
allow my children to grow up amft
the licentious influences of this land.
must separate them from these evi
surroundings, and therefore | sen(
them back home to be educated and Il
be kept morally and spiritually pure"
"When the Puritans arrived in thu
city of Leyden, which was to be thei
home for some years to come" wrote
the author of "The Pilgrim Fathers OF
New England" "the eXiles from Scroo
by lived very much together, a com
munity within a community, dwelling
among a, strange people" Thus was
it with the Hebrews in the BabylOnisL
exile They kept as completely sepa
rate as possible. In order to keep their
! Hebrew religion pure and undefled
they became in time a people narrow
and bigoted and clannish. SO the be
| ginning of the sect was altogether COM
mendable. The Jew was a despised
captive. He could not reform the con-
T ditions around him, but he could reg
lister his protest against them by with
drawing himself from them. Not all
the Jews of that time were willing to
thus withdraw at the cost of obloquy
and perhaps financial loss. Those who
did withdraw were called separatists
or Pharisees. Though the Pharisees
as a class were narrow and bigoted
they had their origin in the noblest and
purest of ideals. They were first or
ganized as a sect in order to protect
their own morals and the morals of
their children.
l cannot Illustrate my thought better
than by taking you for a little while in
old Jerusalem to the "wailing place" of
the Jews. 1t is one of the great sights
for the Palestine tourist to see. Though
Jerusalem has been under foreign con-
troll for centuries upon centurt es, yet
the intense patriotic Hebrews have not
forgotten their race or their religion.
They are not allowed to enter the Mo
hammedan mosque which is built up
on the site of the old temple, so they
gather day after day at the foot of the
walls where there are stones that once
formed part of the temple. There they
repeat over and over again the lamen-
tatiOn of the Seventy-ninth Psalm: 80
God, the heather are come into thine
inheritance. Thy holy temple have
they defiled. They have laid Jerusa-
lem on heaps. We are become a re-
derision to them that are roundabout
us. How long Lord? Wilt thou be
angry forever" Thus they stand day
after day as their fathers stood, and
month after month and year after year
and century after century the weeping
and wailing and praying and pleading
go on. Thus did the eXiled Hebrews
hnonT1n hn n hn tow,
of Babylon. Day after day, year after
year, they pleaded with God to bring
them back to the Davidc capital
"How long, o Lord" they cried, chow
long must we live amid these licentious
and disappearing Babylonians? How
long? How long? How long" Thus
they prayed. Thus they pleaded. And
thus they refused to mingle with the
ChaIdean sinners. Thus we find that |
the genesis of the Pharisees was in
spired by love for God, by love for
purity and by love for the Mosaic laws. |
Their Deeeneracy.
Having explained the genesis of the |
Pharisees, it is sad to have to trace !
their spiritual degeneracy. When God
took pity on the race and permitted |
them to return to Palestine, the Phari-
sees were proud of the attitude they
had taken. They had been faithful
while many of their brethren had not,
and they were proud of it. Now, spir-
itual pride is always a bad thing and
leads men into serious faults. If you
once teach the doctrine that the most
important fact of a mans life is to live
by set Of rules and stand up straight,
It is not very difficult for him, like q
fancy pigeon, to go strutting around
bending backward. AS he had sepa-
'ated from the idolatrOus Chaldeans
he now separated himself from his
brethren and plumed himself on his
obedience to the minute letter of the
aw. In order to keep separated from
lis fellow men he said, 81 will obey
he law" Then, in order to try to fol-
ow out the letter of the law, he lost
light of the spirit of the law. Then he
aid, IF l pay my tithes and l keep
he laws of purity and I obey the law
# the Sabbath, why, l am a perfect
man," Now, you know and / know
hat there is no set of laws ever made
hat the man who wants to evade
hem cannot find a way to climb over
II under or go around if you only give
lin time enough to work out his
chemes.
The Pharisees said, 1--WE must obey
be Bible" Then in order to bolster up {
he Bible they hedged it around with a
1t of traditional commands of the Tai
mud. Then as soon as they had msde
he letter of the law binding they {
volved a lot of rules by which they