In vain you hope the ways of life to find; Into the pit of pain you all shall slide, Ind wilfully misled, with their unfaithful guide.

THE SCRIBES AND PHARISEES.

God's command our parents bids obey,
On pain of death; but your traditions say;
Whoe'er to corban does his substance give,
He need no more his aged sire relieve.

OUR LORD's fame became so great, that some of the inhabitants of Jerusalem came to watch and ensnare him. The scribes and Pharisees accused him, saying "Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? But he answered and said, Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition? For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death." (Matthew xv. 2, 3, 4).

Our blessed Lord spoke of their traditions as novel inventions of their own, and

pointed out one instance in which this was

notoriously the case, that of their transgressing the fifth commandment. The whole of children's duty to their parents is included in honouring them, and is the foundation of all the rest. Our Saviour here speaks of the duty of children in supporting their parents, and being in every way serviceable to their comfort; aud he insists upon the penalty annexed to the disobeying of this commandment, "He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death." By our Saviour's application of this law, it that denying service or relief to parents is included in cursing them.

appears,

Their tradition was-That a man could not in any case bestow his worldly estate better than to give it to the priest, and devote it to the service of the temple. And all other obligations, though ever so just and sacred, were superseded, and a man was thereby

discharged from them. This proceeded partly from the superstitious regard they had to the temple, and partly from their love of money; for what was given to the temple, the priests were gainers by. See how they allowed the application of this to the case of the children. When their parents' necessities called for their assistance, they pleaded that all they could spare from themselves and their children, they had devoted to the treasury of the temple; and therefore their parents must expect nothing from them. Many undutiful, unnatural children made use of this plea, and the Pharisees justified them in it.

Whatever leads to disobedience, does, in effect, make void the command; and those who take upon them to dispense with God's law, do, in Christ's account, repeal and disannul it. To break the law is bad; but to