Page:An analysis of religious belief (1877).djvu/306

 who neglected the usual customs; who, for example, played a game at cricket, or danced, or even pursued his commercial avocations on Sunday, would be visited by them with perfectly genuine reproaches. Yet this was exactly the sort of way in which Christ and his disciples shocked the Jews. To make a path through a cornfield and pluck the ears was just one of those little things which the current morality of the Sabbath condemned, much as ours condemns the opening of museums or theatrical entertainments. Their piety was scandalized at such a glaring contempt of the divine ordinances. Nor was the reasoning of Jesus likely to conciliate them. To ask whether it was lawful to do good or evil, to save life or to kill on the Sabbath-day was nothing to the purpose. The question was what was good or evil on that particular day, when things otherwise good were by all admitted to be evil. Nor were the cures effected by Jesus necessary to save life. All his patients might well have waited till evening, when the Sabbath was over. One of them, for instance, a woman who had suffered from a "spirit of weakness" eighteen years, being unable to hold herself erect, was surely not in such urgent need of attendance that a few hours more of her disease would have done her serious harm. Jesus, with his principles, was of course perfectly right to relieve her at once, but it is not to be wondered at that the ruler of the synagogue was indignant, and told the people that there were six working days; in them therefore they should come and be healed, and not on the Sabbath. The epithet of "hypocrite," applied to him by Jesus, was, to say the least, hardly justified (Lu. xiii. 10-17).

Another habit of Jesus, in itself commendable, excited the displeasure of the stricter sects. It was that of eating with publicans and sinners. This practice, and the fact of his neglecting the fasts observed by the Pharisees, gave an impression of general laxity about his conduct, which, however, unjust, was perfectly natural (Mk. ii. 15-22; Mt. ix. 10-17; Lu. v. 29-39). Here again I see no reason to attribute bad motives to his opponents who merely felt as "church-going" people among ourselves would feel about one who stayed away from divine service, and as highly decorous people would feel about one who kept what they thought low company.