Page:The old paths, or The Talmud tested by Scripture.djvu/419

 usages may procure. Here then is another and more unequivocal badge of slavery. The oral law deprives the poor entirely of liberty of conscience. He not only must not eat, he must not think, at least he must not express a thought, no, nor even a doubt, about that system which is the cause of his misery. It is true, that those who profess or suppress religious sentiments merely to serve their temporal interests, are either very weak or very guilty. But we must make some allowance for the infirmity of human nature, and especially in the case of a poor man, who has no bread for his children, and whose mind has been debased from his youth by such bondage. It is to the system that we are to impute these debasing effects. It not only torments the body, but degrades the mind; and, therefore, every Israelite who loves and respects liberty of conscience, should endeavour to procure it for his brethren. According to the law of the land they have it. They are free to worship and serve God as they think most agreeable to his will; but the oral law steps in between, and deprives them of the benefit. The Jewish poor dare not serve God according to their conscience, nor even express the convictions of their heart. All the legislators in Christendom could not set them free. The duty as well as the possibility of delivering them from this bondage rests with their brethren. But they, alas! whatever the motive, decline the glorious task.

No. LII.

LAWS CONCERNING MEAT WITH MILK.

It is recorded of the Cutheans and those other nations whom the King of Assyria placed as colonists at Samaria, that they endeavoured to combine the service of the true God with the worship of idols. "So these nations feared the Lord, and served their craven images, both their children and their children's children: as did their fathers, so do they unto this day." (2 Kings xvii. 41.) Every one can see that this conduct was as foolish as it was wicked. It was wicked to dishonour the true God by associating him with them that were no gods; and it was foolish to imagine that God could be pleased with a partial homage and a divided heart. Total idolatry would have been more reasonable and less offensive to the Divine Being, for he,