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The Spirit of Prophecy Volume 2
Alarmed at these visitations of divine punishment, they returned
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to the strict observance of all the outward forms enjoined by the sa-
cred law. Not satisfied with this, they made burdensome additions to
those ceremonies. Their pride and bigotry led them to the narrowest
interpretation of the requirements of God. As time passed they grad-
ually hedged themselves in with the traditions and customs of their
ancestors, till they regarded them with all the sanctity of the original
law. This confidence in themselves and their own regulations, with its
attendant prejudice against all other nations, caused them to resist the
Spirit of God, and separated them still farther from his favor.
Their exactions and restrictions were so wearisome that Jesus de-
clared: “They bind heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne, and lay
them on men’s shoulders.” Their false standard of duty, their superficial
tests of piety and godliness, obscured the real and positive require-
ments of God. Heart service was neglected in the rigid performance of
outward ceremonies. The Jews had so perverted the divine command-
ments, by heaping tradition upon tradition, that, in the days of Christ,
they were ready to accuse him of breaking the Sabbath, because of his
acts of mercy upon that day.
The grain was ready for the sickle when Jesus and his disciples
passed through the corn fields on the Sabbath. The disciples were
hungry, for their Master had extended his work of teaching and healing
to a late hour, and they had been without food for a long time. They
accordingly began to pluck the ears of corn and to eat, rubbing them
in their hands, in accordance with the law of Moses, which provides
that: “When thou comest into the standing corn of thy neighbor, then
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thou mayest pluck the ears with thine hand; but thou shalt not move a
sickle unto thy neighbor’s standing corn.”
But spies were continually upon the track of Jesus, watching for
some occasion to accuse and condemn him. When they saw this act of
the disciples, they immediately complained to him, saying, “Behold
thy disciples do that which is not lawful to do upon the Sabbath day.”
In this they expressed their own narrow views of the law. But Jesus
defended his followers thus: “Have ye never read what David did,
when he had need, and was a hungered, he, and they that were with
him? how he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the
high priest, and did eat the shewbread, which is not lawful to eat but
for the priests, and gave also to them which were with him? And he