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Updated: June 16, 2025
There is yet another vice which occurs readily to any one who reckons up the characteristics which we derive mainly from the Jews; it is one that we call, after a Jewish sect, "Pharisaism."
But, however and whenever it shall appear, they at least will watch its dawning, neither with the selfish assurance of modern Pharisaism, nor with the abject terror of mediaeval superstition; but with that manful faith with which he who sang the 98th Psalm saw the day of the Lord dawn once in the far east, more than two thousand years ago, and cried with solemn joy, in the glorious words which you have just heard sung words which the Church of England has embodied in her daily evening service, in order, I presume, to show her true children how they ought to look at days of judgment; and so prepare to meet their God:
The underworld is now first divided into Paradise and Gehenna. The doctrine of the fall of man, through his participation in the representative guilt of his first parents, is Pharisaic; as is the strange legend, which St. Justification, in Pharisaism as for St. Paul, means the verdict of acquittal.
In this respect, our Puritan ancestors were the true children of Pharisaism, and their Blue Laws more properly belong in the Talmud than in the Constitution of an American Commonwealth. God loves a cheerful giver, and would you not judge from appearances that religion was painful to these pious witch-burners and everything for God most grudgingly done?
Who so clearly set aside Pharisaism, which, as years passed, threatened to creep in among us? Who so deeply discerned as to the spirits of delusion which sought to bewilder us? Who would have governed my whole economy so wisely, richly, and hospitably, when circumstances commanded?
Had he not already preached the advent of this spiritual kingdom, and been instrumental in raising many to loftier conceptions of duty, and to a higher and purer life? And might he not now, by a grand attack upon Pharisaism in its central stronghold, destroy its prestige in the eyes of the people, and cause Israel to adopt a nobler religious and ethical doctrine?
Now, Madame de Maintenon, whatever her defects, her pharisaism, her cunning, her ambition, and her narrow religious intolerance, was still, it would seem, always respected, not only by the King himself, a great discerner of character, but by the court which she controlled, and even by that gay circle of wits who met around the supper-tables of her first husband.
His terrible denunciation and enumeration of evil indicate a very lax morality in every quarter, added to hypocrisy and pharisaism. He shows what a poor thing is sacrifice unaccompanied with virtue. "To what purpose," said he, "is the multitude of sacrifices? Bring no more vain oblations. Incense is an abomination to me, saith the Lord.
We may therefore surmise that when the church was built a sprinkling at least of the villagers were none too well pleased. This may partly explain the sullen hostility of which the clergy are still the objects in certain quarters of the village, and which the Pharisaism of some of their friends does much to keep alive.
However unpleasant it may be to look at the black side of such a city's history, yet the study must be profitable if by it we Americans, proud of our tolerance and our humanity, jealous of aught past or present that may blot our escutcheon, wondering at and scornfully pitying nations that could have had Lord George Gordon riots and blood-thirsty land-leagues, a reign of terror and a commune, if we may learn not to be quite so arrogant in our righteousness, quite so boastful in our Pharisaism; if we may learn how much reason we of the New World have to bear in mind, when we read about the past and present of the Old World, the divine command: "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."
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