PHARISAISM AND FAITH.

MATT. XV. 1-28.

Ir is a very sad thing, but that which ever has to be done, that God and man must be put in opposition one to the other. This refers to the natural state of man, of course. The constant labour of the Spirit, the whole business, so to speak, of the Bible, is to bring out distinctly the true relationships to each other of God and man, and to contrast the state of man with what we find in God. And this after all is blessed, because on one side it is a testimony to God's grace and goodness, as well as to His holiness.

Now this is the reason that "religion" and "religiousness' are the constant and greatest hindrance to truth in the soul. As all truth goes upon the supposition that man and God are as far as they possibly can be one from another, anything that supposes them to have dealings one with another, is therefore that which denies the first principles of truth. The Lord said plainly to the chief religionists of the day, setting all their religion aside, "The publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you." (Chap. xxi.) And we get the same testimony throughout the whole tenor of His life. The setting up of religion and religiousness assumes that man, such as he is by nature, can have to do with God; but " grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." Consequently the thing set up against the Lord was not sin and sinners, but "religion.' That which hindered Him, crossed His path, took Him to prison, put Him to death, cast Him out of the world, was "religion"-man's religion!

Sad is it, most sad, to see the sinner neglecting the great salvation, denying his lost condition, and concealing from himself his awful doom; but it is still worse to see forms of religion (in those who call themselves by the name of Christ) shutting out God. The power of Satan is shown more perhaps in religion than in any one thing else. And it has been so from the beginning to the end in man's history. The very first thing that takes place in the heart, the very first effect, when we come to the knowledge of self and of God (as the result of the Spirit's setting the conscience in the presence of God) is, that all our religion disappears. We cannot keep it up, when it is simply a question between the

conscience and God. Let the conscience but be brought into the presence of God, and man's religion fails; we discover it to be something that may indeed hide God from us, but not ourselves from God; it all tumbles down when we find ourselves with our sins in presence of the holiness of God, and are really conscious that we have to do with our sins in the sight of God, and not with our religion. We cannot call our sins religion.

This is every day history. We get it brought out in a very strong light in this chapter; but it is not that which was true of the scribes and Pharisees merely. Anything will suit man, provided it is not his conscience in the presence of God. When God's light shines in, it detects what is in the heart. Man always seeks to conceal the heart, just because it is that which cannot bear examination; God opens up the heart, and brings into the conscience the evil of it, because, till that is right, all is wrong. In order that there should be peace in the soul, we must know both ourselves and God; that there is nothing but evil in us; that there is nothing but goodness in God. But then the thought of having our hearts known is terrible, anything rather than that; and we are so habituated to hiding them from ourselves, and from one another, that we seek to hide them from God, and fancy we can do so. We first set about to be righteous by commands which we cannot fulfil, and then, our conscience nothing satisfied, we add ceremony to ceremony, and tradition to tradition, to eke out a righteousness of our own. There may be a great deal of truth held along with this. Much that the Pharisees held was truth, though there was a great deal of error and superstition mixed up with it. Well, the moment

the conscience is really awakened, there is no question of this kind at all; God so exposes the evil of the heart, that we are obliged to say, 'God knows me.' We find ourselves individual sinners in the presence of God, and we have to begin afresh-we have to learn what God's grace is. This is very

evident, and it is a most material point.

"Religion" is just the thing that specially comes in between the conscience and God. Now what God is working at is to bring the conscience to Himself, without religion, or any thing else between. Until that is done, nothing is done. God is dealing with realities. He detects that which is in the heart, in order that He may make known complete forgiveness, that there may be entire and eternal removal of everything that

would mar our fellowship. (See Heb. ix. x.) This is grace. Nothing is more simple, though the heart of man is insensible to it. God may use man as an instrument in effecting this; but the object of the preacher of the gospel is, to bring the conscience of the sinner and God immediately into contact: if his notion stop short of that, it is only setting them in opposition. We may merely like the truth, but that is all nothing; if a man is not brought to God, if he be not, in conscience, standing in the presence of God, he is brought no nearer than he was before; he has only got, so to speak, further from God, for he has more between his conscience and God.

Now it is this that is shown out in the chapter before us; we have the whole history of the feelings of the heart of man, until the Lord brings it down to the place of faith-I say down, because it is brought to the confession of its own nothingness, to say, 'I am a dog.' And then the Lord says, "Great is thy faith." And that is always the case. We shall never find 'great faith' in a man's soul, if he does not confess that he is a sinner, having no title to any thing at all—a mere dog.

"Then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees which were of Jerusalem." (v. 1.) The scribes were persons learned in the law, and the Pharisees were religionists of the sect most esteemed in religion; as Paul says, "After the most straitest sect of our religion, I lived a Pharisee" (Acts xxvi. 5); and they were "of Jerusalem," the very centre of God's polity, so that everything that could give the weight of authority to 66 "religion" was there.

And they do come with authority; they say to Jesus, "Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread.” (v. 2.) But Jesus at once puts both scribes and Pharisees, and their tradition, in direct contact with God. He says to them, "Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?" (v. 3.) He does not go round about and battle the question of this tradition; it might be right enough in some sense; at all events it was reputable in the eyes of man, sanctioned by the learning of the scribes as well as by the religiousness of the Pharisees, and comely in Jerusalem; but He says, 'You are flying in the face of God by your tradition!' He at once closes the point, dropping elders and all besides. Man may plead tradition, the authority of antiquity and the like, but the fact is, he does so but to clothe himself with it. To the Pharisees, this tradition was

the tradition of the elders; but to Christ, it was "ye" and "your tradition." He takes hold of them. They were using it to accredit themselves unto men, not to lay the conscience bare before God. Religiousness and ceremonial holiness accredit us with men; but faith lays us bare before God.

Then He goes on: "For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and thy mother: and, He that curseth father and mother, let him die the death. But ye say" (it was their tradition that said it, but He substitutes 'ye'), "Whosoever" (no matter who, or how he says it) "shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; and honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition." (vv. 4-6.) It was for their profit; it matters not whether it was money or something else; religion is always turned to a selfish end in man's use of it. He clothes himself with it in order that he may give himself weight before men.

And now the Lord thus sets the condition of the whole people before them: "Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth" (they were not sinners, in the common sense of the word, ie. irreligious, without any profession of thought about God; quite the contrary, the thing stated of them here is, This people draweth nigh unto me'), "and honoureth me with their lips; BUT their heart is far from me.' It was not the sincerity of conscience, and yet the Lord could use the expression, "draweth nigh." "BUT" (He adds) "in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men." (vv. 8, 9.) All this religion and religiousness is at once disposed of. There might be the semblance of what was according to God in the "washing of hands;" for the Lord Himself uses water as the emblem of purity; but it was to answer their own ends, and the Lord says, that, whatever it was, it was a commandment of men-that was all. And it was in vain. There is a worship which is worshipping of God in vain.

It is thus that Christ disposed entirely of what may be called "religion;" God's order, God's commandments, God's will, have been set aside by man in his drawing nigh in his own way to God. If he thinks to draw nigh with his heart, such as it is, what would be the consequence? This the Lord goes on to show. And here we see the awful character

of religion without the conscience before God. "Out of the heart," He says, "proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies." These are what come out of the heart. Man may talk of drawing nigh to God with the heart; but with what kind of heart? How can he draw nigh, when "out of the heart" proceed all these things? There is the difficulty. If man will speak of drawing nigh to God, if he will have his forms of religion, his scribes and Pharisees, his Jerusalem, what is it all? Just what the Lord said; the drawing nigh with the mouth, the honouring with the lip; but with heart far from God. Religious forms, the intricacies of ceremony and tradition, even though in the abstract according to the truth of God, are to our hearts now what Jerusalem was to these Pharisees. All that was known of God, all that God had revealed, and He had revealed much in the figures of the law, foreshadowing better things, was there; but the flesh cannot be bettered by ordinances; and if it was a question of drawing nigh to God, while the heart was what it was, and while the whole character of their religion was that of self, Jerusalem was nothing whatever but a blind to the consciences of men. And have not hundreds of us been going on in the same way, with additional truth, no doubt? We may have liked the truth Christianity has introduced, because it had no power in the conscience and on the heart; yet in principle it was the same thing. The craft and lie of Satan is to take all these things, and to say that a man can draw nigh to God through them, while with his heart he does not. This has been ordinarily Satan's way; he acts more by subtility, and upon the ground of the truth of God, than by an open and simple lie; aye, more than by infidelity and the denying of the truth of God. Religion is the thing he uses, and what meets it in the heart of, man is the supposition (after all clearly hypocrisy) that man can approach God, put off God with these things, when in truth he is merely seeking to satisfy his own conscience. Satan's lulling conscience asleep through forms of religion, is a very different thing from God's awakening the conscience by the power of truth. There may be the form of truth, and that much insisted on; but where God has not awakened the conscience, religiousness and religion are only put between the conscience and God to hide from God.

Having spoken of religion in the flesh-the heart's religion,