Milford chronicle., 1907-03-15
Morally Wrong.

Morally Wrong.
As a man of common sense you
know that a man may be technically
right and yet morally wrong. He may
obey the law of the state to the letter
and yet be as dishonest as any Grim
inal behind iron bars wearing the con-
vict's stripes. If you are conversant
with history, you know that gold went
ND to a high premium during the civil
war. A short time after the civil war
n tax collector was elected for one Of
the counties of Illinois. BY the law Of
that county all taxes must be collected
in gold. This tax collector collected
all those taxes in gold, and then he paid
the taxes into the treasury of the coun-
tv in currency and poclleted the differ
ence. He was properly arrested as
nublic defaulter. The case was tried
before a competent judge and jury.
That tax collector was acquitted on
the legal technicality that the law OF
the country did not specifically state
that the tax collector was required to
nav that money into the treasury IN
gold. Legally that recreant tax collect
or was an honest man, but morally he
was a thief and swindler. SO the
Pharisees by legal technicalities cir
cumvented the spirit Of the Hebrew
laws. They climbed over the laws.
They crawled through the loopholes OF
the laws. They broke the laws Of COD
lust the same as some astute citizens
are breaking the laws of their country
today.
When the pharisaical order began to
grow. the rabbinical leaders did not
think the Bible statements of what
God wanted his people to do were
strict enough and full enough and ex-
plicit enough in their teachings. So
these pbarisaical leaders, or rabbis,
wear after year, century after century,
began to form a companion to the BIZ
BILE. which was not so much commen-
taries of the Bible as extensions of the
Bible They filed up their pages with
commandments which God was sup
posed to have forgotten to tell Moses
and Joshua and jeremiah and David
and Ezekiel. Thus this Talmud is
nothing more or less than the tradl-
tions or the oral sayings of the old
Dbarisaical rabbis. 1t told the Jews
what kind Of clothes they were to wear
on the Sabbath day, and how they
were TO cut their finger nails, and how
they were to feed their cattle, and how
they were to unite their ropes. / am
literally speaking the truth about the
Talmud. 1t is filled with childish trlv-
ialities and with the greatest amount
of unmitigated nonsense which was
ever compacted between the covers OF
any book. So with our Bible today.
The learned theolOgians have been at
work. They have covered the leaves
with a mass of traditions. They nave
evolved out of its pages a conglomer-
ate mass of meanings which a ten
vear-old child ought to have sense
| enough to see are not there. And in-
stead Of our opening the leaves of our
sacred Bible and reading the simple
narables of Jesus Christ and interpret
ing them as they ought to be inter-
preted we are hedging our sectarian
churches around with the sayings OF
theologians that Christ would at once
renudiate if he were upon earth. The
cardinal and essential doctrines taught
in the Bible are two-the one, man is
/ n sinner; the other. Christ is n Saviour
Let us beware of traditional creeds
which should have been burned up
long ago in the fires of the dark ages
/ Of sectarian strife.
clinehing the Argument.
Now. like a carpenter driving his
nail into a board and clinching it upon
the other side, we would clinch the ap-
plications 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 adopt the Bible as our only in
fallible rule 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 law? VIII
YOU do this no matter what problems