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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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them with one of their fingers. All their works they do for to be seen of men.--They love the upper- most rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the syna- gogues, . . . . . . and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi.--But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. Ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayers; therefore ye shall receive the greater dam- nation. Ye compass sea and land to make one prose- lyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.--Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint, and anise, and cumin, and have omit- ted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith; these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. Ye blind guides! which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter; but within, they are full of extortion and excess.-- Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed ap- pear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity." Dark and terrible as is this picture, I hold it to be strictly true of the overwhelming mass of professed Christians in America. They strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. Could any thing be more true of our churches? They would be shocked at the propo- sition of fellowshipping a SHEEP-stealer; and at the same time they hug to their communion a MAN- stealer, and brand me with being an infidel, if I find fault with them for it. They attend with Phari- saical strictness to the outward forms of religion, and at the same time neglect the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith. They are al- ways ready to sacrifice, but seldom to show mercy. They are they who are represented as professing to love God whom they have not seen, whilst they hate their brother whom they have seen. They love the |
