Page:Philochristus, Abbott, 1878.djvu/153

Rh One receiveth him'? Nay, it is added that, 'If a sinner repent, all the transgressions which he hath committed are imputed to him as merits,' and that 'Repentance was created before the world.' How then is our Master wrong in receiving them that repent?" But Eliezer answered, with an austere countenance, that repentance availed nothing without works; and he quoted the saying, "No boor is a sin-fearer; nor is the vulgar pious;" and another saying which warneth men "Not to frequent the company of the unlearned." "Moreover," he added, "the All-seeing (blessed is He) alone knoweth the hearts of men, and discerneth the true repentance from the false. Wherefore none can forgive sins but God alone."

Then Nathaniel, remembering how great an evil had befallen his kinswoman through the hardness of Eliezer, became exceeding wroth, and brake out into bitter accusations against the Scribes, because they despised the people of the land: "For lo," he said, "more than half of Israel even now goeth down to the pit of destruction, and ye raise no hand to save them. Yea, when the drowning ones lift up their heads from the waters and cry saying, 'We are alive, help us,' then stand ye on the bank and answer, saying, 'Down, down, ye ought not to be alive, ye are not alive.' For ye say that ye make fences to keep in the Law; but ye make fences indeed to keep out the people from the Law. Wherefore your fences are as offences, and ye are guilty of the blood of half the nation of Israel in the sight of the Lord."

Then Eliezer arose in wrath, and as he went to the door, he turned and looked on Nathaniel and said, "Like master, like scholar:" and so he went out. But when he was departed, Jonathan said to us, "Eliezer spake unadvisedly and harshly; yet is there truth in his words. For when we shun the 'unlearned' and the 'vulgar,' or the