rested the entire superstructure of the Temple itself, and all belief
might topple if the Sabbath was not maintained, and rigorously. In the
houses of the Sadducees Joseph heard these very words, and their crude
scepticism revolted his tender soul: he was drawn back to his own sect,
the Pharisees, for however narrow-minded and fanatical they might be he
could not deny to them the virtue of sincerity. It was with a delightful
sense of community of spirit that he returned to them, and in the
conviction that it would be well to let pass without protest the
observances which himself long ago in Galilee began to look upon with
amusement.

A sudden recollection of the discussion that had arisen in the yard
behind the counting-house, whether an egg could be eaten if it had been
laid the day after the Sabbath, brought a smile to his face, but a
different smile from of yore, for he understood now better than he had
understood then, that this (in itself a ridiculous) question was no
more serious than a bramble that might for a moment entangle the garment
of a wayfarer: of little account was the delay, if the feet were on the
right road. Now the scruple of conscience that the question had awakened
might be considered as a desire to live according to a law which,
observed for generations, had become part of the national sense and
spirit. On this he fell to thinking that it is only by laws and
traditions that we may know ourselves--whence we have come and whither
we are going. He attributed to these laws and traditions the love of the
Jewish race for their God, and their desire to love God, and to form
their lives in obedience to what they believed to be God's will. Without
these rites and observances their love of God would not have survived.
It was not by exaggeration of these laws but by the scepticism of the
Sadducees that the Temple was polluted. If the priests degraded religion
and made a vile thing of it, there were others that ennobled the Temple