Page:What Is The True Christian Religion?.pdf/26

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

ism and piety done in our own strength tainted by selfish ends. In the Jewish dispensation they were the performance of the rituals of the ceremonial law, not the eternal basis of the Ten Commandments, which are forever necessary. "He that hath my commandments. and keepeth them, he is that loveth me."

But that the Lord rejected the sacrificial system as anything but a symbolism of true religion is conclusively shown by the following passage from Micah 6th chapter: "Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath shown thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"

Can we imagine a more complete repudiation of the efficacy of the sacrificial system to save mankind. Even if Jewish symbolists tried to interpret the Christian religion in its terms, does it not show rather their inability to grasp the fact of the changed life as the true religion of Jesus?