influences of this sort, and how weak and imitative souls are entangled
in the network of traditional influence as in a spider's web. Tradition,
in fact, represents to us the accumulated power of past lives as it acts
upon us from the outside, just as what men call heredity represents this
same influence in our own blood.

And we have seen that this power may be, and often is, a real advantage
and support to our life. We feel also that as the Divine light shines
stronger and steadier in human affairs the traditional influence of each
generation ought to become more and more helpful to those that follow.

And yet, you observe, the Saviour gives us no encouragement to depend
upon those helps that tradition might bring us. On the contrary, His
language shows how dangerous He felt the influence of tradition to be.
How are we to account for this? His strongest denunciations are reserved
for the Pharisaic party; and yet a historian would describe them as in
many respects the best elements of Jewish life. They were earnest,
patriotic, religious, many of them wise and holy men; but their judgment
was held in bondage by the influence of tradition, and in this lies the
cardinal defect of their life. They had set up between their souls and
the spirit of God a sort of graven image of ritualistic observances, and
traditional usages and interpretations. They depended on externals, or
what came to them from the past or from the outer world, and their eyes
were blinded, and their hearts hardened against every new revelation.

Thus they stand before Christ, blocking His path, the very embodiment of
that power which closes the soul against those inspiring and purifying
influences that come from direct communion with God. They block the
Saviour's path, because this personal communion is just what He
represents to us--the direct revelation of the Spirit of God in man. He