Page:The old paths, or The Talmud tested by Scripture.djvu/449

"The mourner is forbidden to read in the law, the prophets, and the Hagiographa: it is also forbidden to study in the Mishna, Talmud, Constitutions, and Agadoth." That a mourner would have no great loss in not being allowed to study in the oral law, we can readily believe; but why should he be prohibited from going to the great fountain of consolation—the revealed Word of God? If there be one season of life more fit than another for studying the Word of God, surely it is when death has entered a family, and reminded all its inmates that the wages of sin is death. If a husband or wife be left to mourn over the bereavement of a beloved partner, what consolation can be equal to that which they find in God's promise of a world where there is neither sorrow nor death, and where those who meet shall never part again? If children be left to mourn over the removal of their parents, whither should they flee for consolation rather than to that Word which tells them of him who is the father of the fatherless? Every reasonable person will think also that, when the heart is softened by the paternal chastisement, then is a peculiarly appropriate season for learning his precepts and taking heed to his exhortations—and yet the oral law, with a sort of most perverse ingenuity, has just selected that period of human life, in which the consolations of God's Word are most necessary and its instruction likely to be of most use, to forbid the reading of it altogether. And here, the rabbies have not scrupled to set aside the plain command of God. God says of his law, "Thou shalt meditate therein day and night and makes no exception for the seven days of mourning for the dead. In describing the character of the righteous he says, "His delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth he meditate day and night and pronounces a blessing upon such a character. But the rabbies, in contempt both of the command and of the promised blessing, forbid the already afflicted mourner to obey the command and to seek the blessing. Even when the scribes and rabbies were in the plenitude of their power as civil magistrates in the land of Israel, obedience to such a command would have been unlawful, as implying disobedience to the command of God. The law of God and the law of man are here plainly in collision; the former commanding Israel to study in his law day and night; the latter prohibiting all study for the seven days of the mourning; but whenever these two authorities are opposed, no rational being can doubt that it is Israel's duty to obey God rather than man. But, in the present day, when the oral law is not the law of the land, when, therefore, the ordinances of the scribes have no authority whatever, it is impossible to conceive why Israel should obey this prohibition, unless they wish, by some public act, to exhibit their determination to transgress the laws or God. Every one who abstains from the study of God's Word for seven