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Behold! to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams; for rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness as iniquity and idolatry.” Most memorable words! thus setting virtue and obedience over all rites and ceremonies—a final answer to all ritualism and phariseeism.

Abraham could renounce the idolatries which surrounded him, when called by a supernatural voice; Paul could give up the Phariseeism which-reigned in the Jewish schools and synagogues, when stricken blind by the hand of God; Luther could break away from monastic rules and papal denunciation, when taught by the Bible the true ground of justification, but Savonarola could not.

The lost soul, in short, brims over, upon occasion, with the wine of regeneration. Scraps of our own lustrous impeccability have somehow found their way into them, and we cannot afford wholly to disavow them, in spite of their wretched lodgings. This phariseeism is so inveterate with us, that I may fairly say that one has to be sentenced to jail as a criminal in order to correct it.

The alliance between the police and criminal vice had become so open and aggressive under this bi-boss patronage that the people were aroused and indignant. But as they had no capable leaders and no way of selecting leaders, there arose a self-constituted leadership of uptown Phariseeism and sentimentality, planning the "purification" of the city.

"It may be that more sermons with equal plain speaking would do good. It may be that the conservatism, not to say the Phariseeism, of the modern church requires a John the Baptist to pierce it to the core, and expose its inner rottenness.

Bräsig remembered this, and did not despair of seeing Godfrey a portly parson one of these days, though how it was to come about was rather a puzzle to him. Such was Godfrey Baldrian in appearance; but his portrait would not be complete if I did not add that he had the faintest possible tinge of Phariseeism in his expression.

Strange as it may seem, it is true that the proud pagan in his secret soul despised the good men who came to convert and to enlighten him! Nor were its publicity and its Phariseeism the only elements in the alien religion that offended the red man.

Epictetus, much as he despised riches and display and luxury and hypocrisy and pedantry and all phariseeism, living in the depths of poverty, was yet admired by eminent men, among whom was the Emperor Hadrian himself; and he found a disciple in Arrian, who was to him what Xenophon was to Socrates, committing his precious thoughts to writing; and these thoughts were to antiquity what the "Imitation of Christ" was to the Middle Ages, accepted by Christians as well as by pagans, and even to-day regarded as one of the most beautiful treatises on morals ever composed by man.

No Phariseeism, no shudders of Puritanic horror, no standing afar off; but a simple, loving, fraternal clasp of hands with these struggling women, and an earnest work with them not to ameliorate but to abolish the whole system of woman's subjection to man in both polygamy and monogamy. In a letter home she says: Our afternoon meeting of women alone was a sad spectacle.

Symbolism! An invention of men a necessity of necromancers! God had his ministers and priests, the living media of his will, but of symbols nothing! "Great God! O my God!" the guide began again. A paroxysm of disgust seized the votary. The Phariseeism in which he was born and bred, and which he could no more outlive than he could outlive his body asserted itself.