7:1-23. Jesus was so indifferent about the
religious ablutions that he was brought to book for it by the pious. He
replied that these regulations were not part of the divine law, but later
accretions the product of theological casuistry, and that they tended to
obscure the real divine duties. He cited a flagrant case. By eternal and
divine law a man owes love and support to his parents. But the scribes
held that if a man vowed to give money to the temple, this obligation,
being toward God, superseded the obligation to his parents, which was
merely human. To Jesus this seemed a perversion of religion.
Ecclesiastical claims were made to stifle fundamental social duty. To
Jesus the latter had incomparably higher value. Religion had become a
social danger through such teaching.

Give proof from modern history that religious institutions may become
injurious to social morality and welfare.

Fourth Day: Religion Which Obscured Duty

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye tithe mint
and anise and cummin, and have left undone the weightier matters
of the law, justice, and mercy, and faith: but these ye ought to
have done, and not to have left the other undone. Ye blind guides,
that strain out the gnat, and swallow the camel!

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye cleanse
the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are
full from extortion and excess. Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first
the inside of the cup and of the platter, that the outside thereof
may become clean also.--Matt. 23:23-26.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass
sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he is become so, ye
make him twofold more a son of hell than yourselves.--Matt. 23:15.

The great invective of Jesus against the scribes and Pharisees (Matthew
23) deals wholly with the perversions of religion. In these verses he
emphasizes the fact that the solemn importance attached to external
minutiae turned the attention of men from the really fundamental spiritual
duties, such as justice, mercy, and good faith. As the blood was supposed
to be the sacred element of life, it had to be drained off in butchering,
and a drowned animal could not be eaten. Jesus wittily describes the
Pharisee filtering out drowned gnats from the drinking water, but bolting
some camel of a sin without blinking. The outside of the cup was kep