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We have to think of Christ's deeds as 'signs, not only as 'wonders, or they will do little to draw us to Him. Wonder is a necessarily evanescent emotion, which may indeed set something better stirring in us, but is quite as likely to die barren. The Pharisees did not wonder, and did look into the phenomenon with sharp eyes; and in so far, they were in advance of the gaping multitudes.
But I must confess I never expected that a religion like that of the Koran, which contains so few fundamental truths, and so few mysteries, would have produced such a race of superstitious pharisees.
And indeed I may say of these, as our Lord said of the Pharisees in another case, All the blood of the ignorant, from the beginning of the world, shall be laid to the charge of this generation.
Most of the men in it were Pharisees who were themselves rabbis. And the strange thing was that they were not doing all the talking as they usually did. They were listening too. And they were not listening to a rabbi, but to the voice of a boy. Joseph and Mary moved closer. There could be no mistake about it it was Jesus who was talking! He was asking questions; he was answering questions.
It is, alas, too true that Christian righteousness has been by Christians set forth as something fantastic and unreal, remote from ordinary life, and far too heavenly-minded to care for common virtues. Let us never forget that Jesus Himself has warned us, that except our righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, we shall in no wise enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
In one word, then, the sin of these Pharisees, the unpardonable sin, which ruins all who give themselves up to it, was bigotry; calling right wrong, because it did not suit their party prejudices to call it right.
The opposition to him expressed itself, after the general challenge of his authority, in three questions put in succession by Pharisees and Herodians, by Sadducees, and by a scribe, more earnest than most, whom the Pharisees put forward after they had seen how Jesus silenced the Sadducees.
The intervening portion of history, contained in verses 14-18, should not be permitted to conceal from us the intimate relation that subsists between this and the preceding parable. The application of the first for the reproof of covetousness, touched a besetting sin of the Pharisees, and stung them to the quick.
The Pharisees stopped the disciples, and demanded to know why they were doing something that was against the Law. It was really Jesus with whom they wanted to pick a quarrel, and so Jesus answered for the disciples: "Why, you must have read in the Scriptures that King David and his soldiers once went into the Temple and ate some of the holy bread which only a priest is allowed to eat.
I hold that it is brotherly duty to refrain from serving his brother and sharing his earnings with him. This happens in everyday life. Prahalad did not act against his father, when he declined to associate himself with the latter's blasphemies. Nor was Jesus anti-Jewish when he declaimed against the Pharisees and the hypocrites, and would have none of them.
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