man who received and loved him, was a son of Abraham.[5] The pride of blood appeared to him the great enemy which was to be combated.  In other words, Jesus was no longer a Jew.  He was in the highest degree revolutionary; he called all men to a worship founded solely on the fact of their being children of God.  He proclaimed the rights of man, not the rights of the Jew; the religion of man, not the religion of the Jew; the deliverance of man, not the deliverance of the Jew.[6] How far removed was this from a Gaulonite Judas or a Matthias Margaloth, preaching revolution in the name of the Law!  The religion of humanity, established, not upon blood, but upon the heart, was founded.  Moses was superseded, the temple was rendered useless, and was irrevocably condemned.

[Footnote 1:  Orac.  Sib., book iii. 573, and following, 715, and following, 756-58.  Compare the Targum of Jonathan, Isa. xii. 3.]

[Footnote 2:  Luke xvi. 16.  The passage in Matt. xi. 12, 13, is less clear, but can have no other meaning.]

[Footnote 3:  Matt. v. 17, 18 (Cf.  Talm. of Bab., Shabbath, 116 b).  This passage is not in contradiction with those in which the abolition of the Law is implied.  It only signifies that in Jesus all the types of the Old Testament are realized.  Cf.  Luke xvi. 17.]

[Footnote 4:  Matt. ix. 16, 17; Luke v. 36, and following.]

[Footnote 5:  Luke xix. 9.]

[Footnote 6:  Matt. xxiv. 14, xxviii. 19; Mark xiii. 10, xvi. 15; Luke xxiv. 47.]

CHAPTER XIV.

INTERCOURSE OF JESUS WITH THE PAGANS AND THE SAMARITANS.

Following out these principles, Jesus despised all religion which was not of the heart.  The vain practices of the devotees,[1] the exterior strictness, which trusted to formality for salvation, had in him a mortal enemy.  He cared little for fasting.[2] He preferred forgiveness to sacrifice.[3] The love of God, charity and mutual forgiveness, were his whole law.[4] Nothing could be less priestly.  The priest, by his office, ever advocates public sacrifice, of which he is the appointed minister; he discourages private prayer, which has a tendency to dispense with his office.

[Footnote 1:  Matt. xv. 9.]

[Footnote 2:  Matt. ix. 14, xi. 19.]

[Footnote 3:  Matt. v. 23, and following, ix. 13, xii. 7.]

[Footnote 4:  Matt. xxii. 37, and following; Mark xii. 28, and following; Luke x. 25, and following.]

We should seek in vain in the Gospel for one religious rite recommended by Jesus.  Baptism to him was only of secondary importance;[1] and with respect to prayer, he prescribes nothing, except that it should proceed from the heart.  As is always the case, many thought to substitute mere good-will for genuine love of goodness, and imagined they could win the kingdom of heaven by saying to him, “Rabbi, Rabbi.”  He rebuked them, and proclaimed that his religion consisted in doing good.[2] He often quoted the passage in Isaiah, which says:  “This people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me."[3]