"No man can serve two
masters; ye cannot serve God and Mammon; where your treasure is, there
will your heart be also." This monotheism is not to be satisfied with
stipulated services, how many and great soever; it demands the whole
man, it renders doubleness of heart and hypocrisy impossible. Jesus
casts ridicule on the works of the law, the washing of hands and
vessels, the tithing of mint and cummin, the abstinence even from
doing good on the Sabbath. Against unfruitful self-sanctification
He sets up another principle of morality, that of the service of one's
neighbour. He rejects that lofty kind of goodness, which says to father
and mother, If I dedicate what I might give to you, that will be best
even for you yourselves; He contends for the weightier matters in the
law, for the common morality which sees its aim in the furtherance of
the well-being of others, and which commends itself at once to the
heart of every one. Just this natural morality of self-surrender
does He call the law of God; that supernatural morality which thinks
to outbid this, He calls the commandment of men. Thus religion
ceases to be an art which the Rabbis and Pharisees understand better
than the unlearned people which know nothing of the law.
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