- filment of a natural duty, is punished with flogging? There is
no punishment of which the oral law is so fond; and it would be a curious and interesting employment to furnish a list of all the offences to which it is annexed. Perhaps in nothing does the Talmud differ more from the New Testament. The New Testament has not, in any one case, prescribed so cruel a punishment. The Talmud and all its compendiums prescribe it on the most trifling occasion. The maxim of the New Testament is that of the Old also, "I will have mercy, not sacrifice." Now, if the practice of mercy be more agreeable in the eyes of God, than even those ceremonial rites which he himself ordained, with what pleasure can he contemplate the religion of the oral law, which punishes, even what God has allowed, with unmeasured cruelty? Aben Ezra supposed that this command, "Not to seethe a kid in its mother's milk," was given in order to prevent cruelty even to the brute creation; if this be true, how does God regard the perversion of his mercy, which pretends to keep this command, to spare the brute creation, by dooming hundreds of mankind to starvation, and by flogging those who endeavour to escape from their misery by eating what he has nowhere forbidden? If God has compassion upon the beasts that perish, what can he think of those teachers of religion who talk with such composure of a fellow-creature's fasting for three days before he may eat bread sold by a Gentile baker, and who absolutely decide that it is his duty to die, rather then partake of bread baked by a private individual who is not a Jew? We appeal to the good sense of every Israelite to answer these questions. Is it not evident that the God of mercy must view with indignation, those teachers who thus misrepresent the nature of revealed religion, and who cause his holy name to be blasphemed amongst the ignorant? But if those men are guilty, a portion of their guilt rests upon all those who aid and abet in upholding the system. There can be but little excuse for those who have the Law and the Prophets in their hands, and who therefore ought to know, that the cruelty of the oral law is as contrary to the character of God, as light is to darkness. And there is no excuse at all for those Israelites who themselves despise these Rabbinical laws, and yet by their silence and indifference leave their brethren still in misery. They are answerable for all the dishonour done to God; for all the misery inflicted upon man; and for all the contempt heaped upon the wisdom of Israel.
