red time and
time again. Christianity knows it well. It is only by constant vigilance
that religious freedom is preserved, from which alone comes any high
degree of morality, or any degree of free and upward-moving life among
the people.

It was on account of this shameful robbing of the people of their Divine
birthright that the just soul of Jesus, abhorring both casuistry and
oppression under the cloak of religion, gave utterance to that fine
invective that he used on several occasions, the only times that he
spoke in a condemnatory or accusing manner: "Now do ye, Pharisee, make
clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is
full of ravening and wickedness. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! For ye are as graves which appear not, and the men that walk
over them are not aware of them.... Woe unto you also, ye lawyers! For
ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch
not the burdens with one of your fingers.... Woe unto you, lawyers! For
ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves,
and them that were entering in ye hindered."

And here is the lesson for us. It is the spirit that must always be kept
uppermost in religion. Otherwise even the revelation and the religion
of Jesus could be compressed into a code, with its self-appointed
instruments of interpretation, the same as the Pharisees did the Law and
the Prophets that he so bitterly condemned, with a bravery so intrepid
and so fearless that it finally caused his death.

No, if God is not in the human soul waiting to make Himself known to the
believing, longing heart, accessible to all alike without money and
without price, without any prescribed code, then the words of Jesus have
not been correctly handed down to us. And then again, confirming us in
the belief that a man's deepest soul relation is a matter between him
and his God, are his unmistakable and explicit directions in regard to
prayer.

It is so easy to substitute the secondary thing for the fundamental, the
by-thing for the essential, the container for the thing itself. You will
recall that symbolic act of Jesus at the last meeting, the Last Supper
with his disciples, the washing of the disciples' feet by the Master.
The point that is intended to be brought out in the story is, of course,
the extraordinary condescension of Jesus in doing this menial service
for his disciples. "The feet-washing symbolises the attitu