Formalism's Blindness to Mercy and Divine Power

The Jews witnessed a man delivered from thirty-eight years of misery—yet their reaction was horror, not compassion. They possessed no human sympathy for the sufferer whom hope deferred had made sick and hopeless. Instead, they shuddered at the breach of the Sabbath. 'Sacrifice' eclipsed 'mercy' in their moral calculus. Maclaren identifies the root: formalism twists men's judgments of the relative magnitude of form and spirit.…