No. LV.
MOURNING FOR THE DEAD.
Modern Judaism, or the religion of the Jews, as it is
professed by the majority of the nation scattered through
the world, confessedly consists of two parts. The first is
composed of those laws which are (
Hebrew characters), i.e., which
are either really found in the written law, or are supposed
to be based upon some passage of it. The second, of those
laws which are (Hebrew characters) "of the words of the
scribes," and which are, therefore, mere human institutions.
Concerning those that were given by God, we readily grant
that they can be changed or abrogated only by God himself.
But respecting the latter, both reason and Scripture concur
in assuring us, that what human authority has ordained, a
similar human authority may also abrogate. We grant that
so long as the Jewish polity remained, and the scribes were
magistrates, their ordinances, so far as they were not contrary
to the Word of God, were binding upon the Jews: but even
then those ordinances were not immutable. They might have
been repealed by the scribes and magistrates who succeeded
them. And even then, whenever they stood in opposition
to the Word of God, it was the bounden duty of the Jews
to refuse obedience. For what reason, then do the Jews of
the present day still pay the same homage to the words of
the scribes that they do to the Word of God? The scribes
are not now the civil magistrates of the countries where the
Jews reside; their words, therefore, carry with them no
authority whatever. The Jews are now in different circumstances—are
subject to other magistrates and lawgivers.
The magisterial sanction, which the words of the scribes
had before the dispersion, has long since been lost; but God
nowhere commands the Jews in England to obey laws made
by the civil magistrates of Palestine two thousand years
ago. There is not a shadow of obligation remaining; and
therefore the Jews of the present day have a full right to
examine into their tendency and effects, and if they should
be found injurious or unsuitable to present circumstances, to
reject them. If the words of the scribes be not obligatory
by virtue of Divine authority, the only imaginable reason for
observing them is the supposition that they are conducive
to the welfare and happiness of Israel, but if it can be shown
that this supposition is false, then both reason and religion
would suggest the wisdom of rejecting them. We have
already shown of several such laws that they are alike
noxious to man and dishonouring to God, and think now
