Was not this zeal for the laws and ordinances of the Most High a good zeal? Did not Christ come to fulfil the law?--did He wish to set it aside? Consider, my brethren, what the law was. I do not speak of any spiritual interpretation of it; I refer merely to the letter of the Ten Commandments. They begin with these words, '_I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the house of bondage_.' The zeal of the Pharisees for the law of God forgot this foundation of the law altogether. They did not tell the Israelite that the Lord was _his_ God; they did not proclaim the Lord as a Deliverer from bondage, but as the Author of bondage. Therefore, _every_ commandment was denied in its very essence. The first said, '_Thou shalt worship the Lord_,'--that is, the Lord the Deliverer, the Lord _thy_ God,--'_and Him only shalt thou serve_.' But the Pharisee worshipped any god rather than this only God; worshipped a god who was directly the reverse of this only God. Everything in heaven or earth or under the earth--money, the meanest thing of all--was more an object of worship to him than this only God. He could not help taking His name in vain. Every time he pronounced it he took it in vain; he substituted another name for that of the only God; he cherished another name in his heart. But then came the command to keep the Sabbath-day. Here, at all events, he could be strict to the letter; that he could keep as God had wished it to be kept. What! when that commandment says, 'Man shall rest because God rests; man shall work because God works?' What! when the commandment announced the Sabbath-day as a blessing to the man-servant, and the maid-servant, and the cattle? A Pharisee construe this commandment literally? A Pharisee keep this commandment strictly? Impossible. There was none which he must distort more, in which he must suppress more vital words, which he must more habitually disobey. The denial of the sentence which introduces the commandments--the determination to regard the Lord as a forger of chains, when He declares Himself to be the breaker of them--necessarily led to a greater and grosser violation of this statute and ordinance of the Lord than of all the rest.