or to keep a pot from being smoked, that is to say, if he can keep it from being smoked without extinguishing the fire, as by removing it from one fire to another. But if he has not got another fire, and if the pot must be smoked unless he extinguish it, then the extinguishing is lawful, that the pot may not be smoked." (Orach Chaiim, 514.) Now we put it to the common sense of every Jew, whether in these laws there be justice, mercy, and religion; or hardship, inconsideration, and absurdity?
No. XIV.
SEVERITY AND ARTIFICE.
The oral law says, as we saw in our last, that, on a holy day,
it is unlawful to extinguish a fire in order to save a man's house
and property, but that it is lawful, on the same day, to do the
very same thing to keep a pot of cookery from being smoked.
This sentence may perhaps appear wise and pious to those who
have got more houses than one, or the means of procuring
them; but with respect to the poor man, who in such a case
loses his all, and must see his family left without a roof over
their heads or a bed to lie on, this decision is as cruel as it is
senseless. There is, however, a tyranny more dreadful than that
which affects only the temporal condition of men. The spiritual
despotism, which burdens and fetters the conscience and
enslaves the soul, is more intolerable still. Under temporal
losses a man's mind may be supported by a sense of religion;
but when his religion, by the multiplicity and rigour, and
intricacy of its requirements, becomes his tormentor, man is
bereft of his last consolation. The religion of the oral law
appears to us to be of this character, and its enactments with
regard to the holy days will serve to justify this our opinion.
We have seen already, that it requires two days' cessation from
business, where God requires only one, and that the general rule
is, Whatsoever is unlawful on the Sabbath, is unlawful on the
holy day, with one exception. The Scribes, however, were not
content with this, they have contrived to invent something,
which, though lawful on the Sabbath, is on these days unlawful.
They say, that there is a certain class of things, which, if not
deliberately destined the day before for the use of the holy day,
are unlawful. To this class they give the name of (
Hebrew characters)
Muktzeh, which literally signifies "separated or cut off," but
