38 The ideal Pharisee. CHAP. 



highest that any created being can hope to attain. 

 Compare Saint Paul's assertions of the blessedness of 

 God's children : " If children, then heirs : heirs of 

 God, and joint heirs with Christ." 1 " Whether the 

 world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to 

 come, all are yours." 2 The apparent inconsistency 

 may, however, be easily reconciled. Our Lord in this 

 parable chose, for the sake of argument and illus- 

 tration, to take the Pharisees at their best, and to 

 describe not the actual but the ideal Pharisee one 

 who, like Saint Paul before his conversion to Christ, 

 was neither covetous, nor unjust, nor impure, but 

 " as touching the righteousness which is in the law, 

 found blameless." 3 This, it is true, was far short 

 of the Christian ideal, for "the law was given by 

 Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ " ; 4 

 but it was the ideal of righteousness held up to 

 ancient Israel; and He so framed the parable as 

 to show them the special errors and temptations 

 of such a character of those who, like the elder 

 son, have never left the Father's house, and there- 

 fore have never had to return to it; who have 

 never needed to pass through a crisis of conversion, 

 but, like Samuel in the Old Testament and Timothy 

 in the New, have from childhood been so instructed 

 as to be made wise unto salvation ; whose blessedness 

 is that godliness is with them a habit, while their 

 danger is that it may be nothing more. 



1 Romans viii. 17. 2 1 Cor. iii. 22. 



3 Philippians iii. 6. 4 John i. 17. 



