This is certain: the only thing he denounced in a tone that was almost anger was zealous adherence to the form and to the letter, and sanctimonious contentment with this poor substitute for religion when the spirit of worship and service was dead. It will be the plainer to us that his was very far from being a man’s way when we remember that, with men, the less of spirit and reality an institution has the more anxious they are about mere form and letter. A spiritually dead man will contend more zealously about the form of a duty than the duty itself. And this is not unnatural; when a Church is dead there is nothing left but form--a body ready for burial. What terrific words Jesus used in what he said of such things! Let us hear him and try to understand how much he means for us of to-day: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint, and anise, and cummin, and have omitted 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 out 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 sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.” Had Jesus been only a man, conceiving vast plans for propagating his doctrines and perpetuating his kingdom, he would have done all the things he did not do. He would have relied on force, money, diplomacy, argument. He would have considered what human selfishness is, and he would have appealed to it. He would have provided institutions and have founded schools. There would have been a “propaganda” compassing the world in its plans, and his agents would have been drilled in forms and methods after the manner of men. He would, to have been at all like a man in his plans, have left a system of “ethics” or “theology.” He would have formulated a “creed”; he would have drawn up a “constitution” with “bylaws” for his Church, stating in terms every principle and providing, according to the foresight given him, for every contingency, as did John Wesley with his Discipline and Legal Hundred. (Can it be necessary to say this illustration is no reflection upon the great and good English reformer, who was a mere man?) He would have set for rigid observance forms and ceremonies of which he had none and prescribed none, not so much as telling men how they were to do in the matter of the sacraments--baptism and the memorial supper. Mere men always do such things. Jesus did not adopt a man’s way in any of his work or plans, unless we except those who have learned of him something of the divine art of doing good to the souls and bodies of men. CHAPTER XIII. “JESUS CHRIST TOOK THE WAY OF PERISHING.”