joiceth not in iniquity but in the truth; beareth, believeth, hopeth, endureth all things. For now we see in a dark manner, but then face to face; now we know in part, but then even as we are known."
First of all, then, we see from the parable that favorable self-judgments are apt to be fallacious. There is not one of us, perhaps, who has half as sound reasons for regarding himself with complacency as had the Pharisee. Execrate them as we may, we are still forced to admit that the Pharisees as a sect had a noble mission, which they nobly fulfilled. From the very beginning, exclusiveness had been one of the most prominent characteristics of the chosen people. It was God's design that they should continue an unmixed race, a nation apart, and in the course of ages so firmly did this idea take hold on the popular mind and so intimately interwoven with the Messianic promises did they regard it, that we find them everywhere and always hedging themselves around with barriers to check the incursions and the secularizing influence of the detested Gentiles. How strong was this spirit in Apostolic times is evident from St. Paul's strenuous and oft-repeated efforts to abolish the distinction between the Jew and Gentile and to place all on a common Christian level, and how much of it survives to-day is apparent in the aloofness and clannishness of our Hebrew citizens. Now, to preserve their integrity inviolate was for the Jews on their return from captivity a difficult task indeed, for the bulk of the nation remained irrevocably scattered through heathendom from Baby-
