Page:The old paths, or The Talmud tested by Scripture.djvu/125

 weight or measure is also forbidden, if it be done openly and honestly, but allowed if it be done cunningly and deceitfully.

"And thus a man must not take any thing from a shopkeeper by weight or measure, only let him say to the shopkeeper, Fill this vessel for me; and on the morrow he gives him the value. And even though the vessel should be one set apart for the purpose of measuring, he may fill it, provided that the name of a measure be not mentioned." (Ibid.) In all these cases it is plain that a real transaction of buying and selling takes place, and on the showing of the rabbies themselves, contrary to the Word of God. Those men who would flog a fellow-creature for not keeping their own commandment of a second holy day, make no scruple of devising and prescribing a system of fraudulent evasion of God's commands. Perhaps some may think that we use too strong language when we apply the words cunning and deceit to those devices of the oral law, but this language was suggested by the oral law itself, which does not scruple to use similar words, and to pronounce that, in similar cases, cunning or deceit is lawful.

"If a first-born beast and its offspring fall into a pit, the first is to be helped out on condition of slaughtering it, but it is not slaughtered. Then guile is to be used, and the second also helped out on condition of slaughtering it, and then they slaughter which of the two they please. On account of the affliction of the animals, it has been pronounced lawful to use guile." (Ibid. c. ii.) Here the oral law speaks plainly, it fairly says that guile may be used. It is no defence to say, that this guile was suggested by compassion for the animals. If it be lawful to help the animals out of the pit at all, it is lawful to do it without any guile, openly and honestly. And if it be unlawful to help them out, it is doubly unlawful to do so through guile and deceit, as if God was ignorant of the thoughts and designs of their hearts, and could be satisfied with false and fictitious conditions. But there is another case, where this same word is also used, and where the excuse of compassion is altogether out of the question.