VIII TREASON TO CULTURE: THE TEXT:-"Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones and of all uncleanness." Matthew 23:27. THESE are strong and terrible words, falling as they do from the lips of Him who was the Lord of incarnate love. With the exception of those words addressed to the cities of His day-Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum-no words perhaps ever fell from our Lord's lips that voice such a merciless exposure as do these of the shams and hypocrisies of men. There were some kinds of sin in the presence of which our Saviour spoke with the greatest tenderness and the deepest love, for it was written of Him, "The bruised reed He shall not break and the smoking flax He shall not quench." But there were other kinds of sin that required heroic treatment and these never failed to kindle the flame of His high and holy indignation. Spiritual pride was one of them; self-righteousness was another, covetousness was another; oppression of the weak was another. But the one that kindled the hottest flame of His anger was that hypocrisy that harbored a spirit of evil within while it carried a fair profession without. Twelve times in the lesson I have read He hurled His anathemas against it. Seven times out of the twelve He addressed them as "hypocrites"; twice He calls them "blind guides"; twice He calls them "fools and blind"; and once He addressed them as a "generation of vipers." But of all His withering words against sham and the false exterior of life this figure of the text is perhaps the most scathing and rebuking of them all: "For ye are like unto whited sepulchres which indeed appear beautiful outward, but within are full of dead men's bones and of all uncleanness." The imagery behind this denunciation was one that would make a very powerful appeal to the vivid imagination of every Jewish mind. These whited sepulchres gleaming in the sun were a familiar feature in the landscape. They were not separate buildings like the stately mausoleums of Rome. They were simply caverns cut in the face of the limestone rock with a great stone set up to close the opening. Once a year these stones were whitewashed not for the purpose of making them beautiful but to warn the people that a grave was there lest they should touch it, and touching be defiled. Many a time our Lord had wondered at them when He rambled as a lad among the hills of Nazareth. You know how the darkness and the white stones and the thought of the dead would stir the imagination of a boy. It had burned itself into His brain and years afterwards in His preaching whenever He saw the fair exterior and the outward profession, knowing that behind there lay pride and arrogance and spiritual decay and cruelty, His mind flew back to the vivid picture of His youth and He turned to say to them: "Ye are like the whited sepulchres I was wont to see at Nazareth, that appeared so beautiful outwardly but within were full of uncleanness and dead men's bones." Terrible as the figure is, it will always re main as the truest and most merciless exposure of a spurious culture in all its forms. Here we are reminded that "man looketh upon the outward appearance but God looketh on the heart." Here we are warned that the hidden rottenness of life will be eventually exposed. Here we are informed in the plainest of terms that all the decoration and garnishing and polishing of life is useless without a cleansing from within, and no great and lasting transformation of society can ever be expected that does not touch and regenerate the secret springs of being. THE FALSE CONCEPTION OF CULTURE At the present moment the world is vastly interested in the idea of culture because Germany has presented to us a type of culture which she has nourished with the most assiduous care for the past generation. You are all well aware that the German Empire in its present form came to its birth under the dominance of one great idea, the profound conviction of the supreme value of the Teutonic mind and the German element for the |