A Present to His Royal Highness - The Prince of Wales — Page 28
28 the Messiah should appear to support it. Your Royal Highness should, however, keep in view the fact that religion and the followers of a religion are two very different things, and that the religion taught by a revealed book and that practised by those who profess to believe in that book are sometimes as opposed to each other as light is to darkness. Jesus says: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil,” ∗ but in spite of this he says concerning the Scribes and Pharisees of his time, “Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, this people draweth nigh unto Me with their mouth, and honoureth Me with their lips; but their heart is far from Me. ”† And again, he says concerning them, “But woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves…. Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith; these ought ye to have done, ∗ Matthew v; 17 † Matthew xv: 7, 8.