tical body, and what were they all about? Matters of opinion, for the most part, and modes of worship. The means were ever the point at issue, but on the ends in view, sanctification and salvation, the disputes had no other bearing than to unwittingly defeat them. Alas! how many times has the history recorded in the twelfth chapter of Judges repeated itself! How many times has a point in religion as unimportant as the difference between Schibboleth and Sibboleth brought down social ostracism and anathema on individuals and nations, or proved for them, mayhap, a matter of life and death? Take, for example, the incident of to-day's Gospel. The Pharisees, you know, were great sticklers for the law; to expound and enforce it was the chief business of their lives. The ten brief commands, or " words " handed down by God to Moses, had in the course of time been so divided, subdivided, and multiplied, and canning casuistry had surrounded them with such a tangle of cases and exceptions and human traditions, that the service of God had become a veritable burden. Again and again God had signified His disapproval. " Bring no more vain oblations," He said by Isaias, " incense is an abomination unto Me, and your feasts My soul abhorreth." " Hath the Lord," says Samuel, " as great delight in sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, obedience is better than sacrifices, and to hearken than the fat of rams." " Will the Lord " asks Micheas, " be pleased with thousands of rams and ten thousand rivers of oil, and human sacrifice? No, He hath showed thee, O man,
