The Pharisees denied the efficacy of human absolution:  they said, “None can forgive sins, but God only:”  that was a negation.  What did they effect by their system of negations?  They conferred no peace; they produced no holiness.  It would be a great error to suppose that the Pharisees were hypocrites in the ordinary sense of the term—­that is, pretending to be anxious about religion when they knew that they felt no anxiety.  They were anxious, in their way.  They heard a startling free announcement of forgiveness by a man.  To them it appeared license given to sin.  If this new teacher, this upstart—­in their own language, “this fellow—­of whom every man knew whence he was,” were to go about the length and breadth of the land, telling sinners to be at peace; telling them to forget the past, and to work onwards; bidding men’s consciences be at rest; and commanding them not to fear the God whom they had offended, but to trust in Him—­what would become of morality and religion?  This presumptuous Absolver would make men careless about both.  If the indispensable safeguards of penalty were removed, what remained to restrain men from sin?

For the Pharisees had no notion of any other goodness than that which is restrained; they could conceive no goodness free, but only that which is produced by rewards and punishments—­law-goodness, law-righteousness:  to dread God, not to love and trust Him, was their conception of religion.  And this, indeed, is the ordinary conception of religion—­the ordinary meaning implied to most minds by the word religion.  The word religion means, by derivation, restriction or obligation—­obligation to do, obligation to avoid.  And this is the negative system of the Pharisees—­scrupulous avoidance of evil, rather than positive and free pursuit of excellence.  Such a system never produced anything but barren denial. “This is wrong;” “that is heresy;” “that is dangerous.”

There was another class of men who denied human power of absolution.  They were called Scribes or writers—­pedants, men of ponderous learning and accurate definitions; from being mere transcribers of the law, they had risen to be its expounders.  They could define the exact number of yards that might be travelled on the Sabbath-day without infringement of the law; they could decide, according to the most approved theology, the respective importance of each duty; they would tell you, authoritatively, which was the great commandment of the law.  The Scribe is a man who turns religion into etiquette:  his idea of God is that of a monarch, transgression against whom is an offence against statute law, and he the Scribe, is there to explain the prescribed conditions upon which the offence may be expiated; he has no idea of admission to the sovereign’s presence, except by compliance with certain formalities which the Scribe is commissioned to declare.