He
trusted in himself that he was righteous. True. But whatever that
means, it means that he thought that he was righteous, after a
fashion, though it proved to be a wrong one. What our Lord
complains of in them is, first, their hardness of heart; their pride
in themselves, and their contempt for their fellowmen. Their very
name Pharisee meant that. It meant separate--they were separate
from mankind; a peculiar people; who alone knew the law, with whom
alone God was pleased: while the rest of mankind, even of their own
countrymen, knew not the law, and were accursed, and doomed to hell.
Ah God, who are we to cast stones at the Pharisees of old, when this
is the very thing which you may hear said in England from hundreds
of pulpits every Sunday, with the mere difference, that instead of
the word law, men put the word gospel.
For this our Lord denounced them; and next, for their hypocrisy,
their play-acting, the outward show of religion in which they
delighted; trying to dress, and look, and behave differently from
other men; doing all their good works to be seen of men; sounding a
trumpet before them when they gave away alms; praying standing at
the corners of the streets; going in long clothing, making broad
their phylacteries, the written texts of Scripture which they sewed
to their garments; washing perpetually when they came from the
market, or any public place, lest they should have been defiled by
the touch of an unclean thing, or person; loving the chief seats in
their religious meetings, and the highest places at feasts; and so
forth,--full of affectation, vanity, and pride.
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