The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1912-10-12
(By William T. Ellis. }

(By William T. Ellis)
The dirtiest spot on earth known
to me is the present town of Tiberias
on the shore of the Lake of Galilee.
Its filth is memorable even after ex-
perience with hundreds of oriental
communities. Two sects of ultra
orthodox Spanish Jews make Ii
berias their headquarters, maintain
ing schools of the rabbis there. The
curls hanging in front of the ears
and the distinctive raiment of the
tradition Q deserving Jew are more
marked in Tiberias than anywhere
else in the whole land. Here the
jealous wait for the Messiah to rise
from the waters of the lake, accord
ing to their tradition, and to choose
his disciples from their midst, pro-
ceeding to Safed on yonder hill to
set up his earthly kingdom. Now all
this religious zeal and orthodoxy and |
solicitude for ceremonial has no re-
1ation whatever to real cleanliness !
This divorce between traditional 'holi- |
ness and common decency seems to
characterize many sacred places. Thus |
Benares, the holy city of the Hindus, |
IS sacred that even if an infidel ,
dies on its soil he has hopes of para |
disc Yet Benares, the city, is fairly /
nauseous. Mecca, toward which /
every Moslem turns when he prays, /
and whittier two hundred thousand !
pilgrims go every year, is the greatest |
breeding place for cholera known to /
medical science.
There all represent, like the fastid
fousness of the pharisees, the religion |
of ceremonialism. Rites and observ-
ances are exalted to first place. The
old Jews of the time of Christ had
overland the law of Moses with their
traditions until religion had become
burden too heavy to be borne. The
exactions of the rabbis ran down into
every department of human interest
and into every hour of the life of the
faithful
The RefOrmer Dissents.
Clearly and fearlessly Jesus took
issue with all this. He knew that
the tendency of all religion is to de-
teriorate into set of formal obServ-
ances. The heather faiths that en-
vironed Israel, even as the heather
faiths of today, prescribed practices
and ritual instead of spiritual faith.
So the brave Teacher from Nazareth
did not hesitate to indict the experts
in religious ceremonialism as blind
guides. With high disdain he dis
missed the pharisees and their claims
as teachers. In this, as always, the
principles he laid down hold for all
time.
The platform of the Reformer upon
which all the race will one day come
to stand, is God is a spirit, and they
that would worship Him must wor-
ship Him in spirit and in truth"
Lip religion is not life religion. :
Seeming right is less important than
being right. The fundamental con- (
I 4
heart shall be right with God. This I
is not effected by religious demeanor :
and prescibed practices; on the con-
trary out of the heart flow the fruits
of a true religion.
Clean Hands or Clean Lives.
The debate which is set forth in
this present Sunday school lesson
arose from the fact that the dis
ciples of Jesus did not observe all
the strict pharisaical rituals. In
n he do h6 ,
busy, out-of-door folks, the plain ,
people, follow all the minutiae of all ,
the ritual of their religious teach
ers. The peasant women in Moslem
lands go about unveiled. The ordinary
Arab does not say his five prayers
daily nor perform the prescribed alb
1utions; the Chinese peasant neglects
his god-shelf, and the Japanese farm ,
er is delinquent in daily offerings be- ,
fore the shrines. These peasant fish !
ermen who followed Jesus were neg
lectfuI of the etiquette of the con-
venIional religious leaders.
The question was not one of ac-
tually clean hands, but of ceremonial
abIutions. The details of these re- |
to u.s. I have ridden with Moslem
pilgrims on the Mecca railway and
found them a filthy crew, whose filth
ness was not altered by the fact that
they washed certain portions of their I
bodies five times a day. Certain of
the Moslem sects were distinguished
by the way they laved their forearms '
whether from the elbow toward the c
hand, or from the hand toward the ell
bow. There are scores of these cere
xnonial practices in Islam, all of them
assiduously cultivated by the men on
pilgrimages, yet the immortality of the
pilgrims at Mecca may not be told in
English speech. Neither Jesus nor G
His friends would bind themselves by K
similar petty regulations concerning s
the usages prescribed by the rabbis i
and the phariSees. \
when Religion Is Not Righteousness. V
One clever dodge of the Jews of t
the time of Christ was to escape the
support of their aged parents by de-
cIarine that their money was corban,
or dedicated to sacred uses. A man
did not have to say when he meant to
use his money for temple purposes;
he could employ 1t for selfish ipduI- c
gence all his life. The VOW was merely s
a trick to escape his clear obligations. W
Equally shallow and unreal were the Il
which figure so largely in the Jewish n
ritual along with the ceremonial y
The enthusiastically correct '
were very careful to keep their hands =
end their lips, but what they needed o.
was to keep their heart with all dill h
for out of it were the issues G.
of life Jesus came preaching the new D
md radical gos&el of a heart religion. "
IT mattered not what a mar ate so V
much as what he said His clean b
hands were no atonement for a heart p
full of unrighteousnesS. If religion q
does not make over a mans heart it y
does not do anything of value to him. o
to a creed or system of d
government or ecclesiastical usage -
means nothing unless the heart itself y
has been made new. Jesus is diheren- f.
tiated from all the other teachers of