To take another point. Slavery to the letter of a written Law hampered moral and spiritual growth; it led men to regard authority as the sole test of truth; it tended to prevent their thinking for themselves as our Lord desired them to do. No word of our Lord countenances the idea of verbal inspiration. He treats the provisions of the Levitical Law as subject to criticism, He never attributes them to God, but either to Moses or those of old time, and after quoting them in His sermon and elsewhere He commonly adds, “But _I_ say unto you” and then delivers His own precept—embracing that of Moses no doubt—but so widely overstepping it, that it would seem to the people to amount to a repeal. A teaching which claimed authority coordinate with that of Moses might well startle the multitude by its contrast with that of the scribes. It may be asked—“Why, if our Lord desired to free men’s minds, did He not declare how far and in what sense their sacred books contained the word of God.” We answer, “He would have caused utter bewilderment if He had entered on such a matter at all.” The truth may be gathered by observing His practice. He never states abstract principles, but He acts as He deems fit and leaves us to infer His views by marking what He does. He never contests the rules about the Sabbath, but He observes them only in His own way. He does not tell the Jews that their Law is not traced by the finger of God, but He amends and criticizes its provisions as though they were of man. Let us suppose, for a moment—not of course that He had cried down the Law like one who exulted in finding a flaw—but that He had attempted to put into men’s heads views about it which their minds had not yet shaped themselves to receive; that He had told them, for instance, that laws must be fitted to human needs, and that as these needs vary, laws must vary too, and cannot be the subject of an ordinance unchanging and Divine. Could He, by such explanations, have given His auditors any true view of Divine rule? Would not the Galileans have cried out, “That if the tables of the Law were not graven by God’s finger they were nothing at all?” Nothing, in our Lord’s wisdom, strikes me more than His moderation with regard to error. What seems false to one man’s mind may be true to that of another. When men, as soon as they spy out an error, cry, “Root it up,” our Lord seems to answer, “Along with the tares some wheat needs must go.” Men are complex beings; and much that is best in them is so intertwined with habits and association that we cannot sweep away long-standing notions and outward symbols and ceremonies without destroying also what is of the essence. Take away from an Italian woman her belief in the Virgin, or from a Scotch peasant that in the sacred obligation of the Sabbath, and a great deal of what is best in them will go too.