It will not do to trust blood as a substitute for religion. Absalom was David’s son. Judas Iscariot could have said, “I am a child of Abraham.” It would seem that even the blindest Hebrew must sometimes have seen enough to make him doubt the sufficiency of Abraham’s name. Christ told the Jews plainly that this dead faith in an ancestor was really a bondage to the devil. About their freedom the Hebrews were peculiarly sensitive. Their forefathers had been in cruel slavery in Egypt. Others had afterward been carried captive to Babylon. Even now the streets of the holy city were guarded by a foreign soldiery. Yet by some legerdemain of logic they reasoned that to be a Hebrew was to be a freeman. We were “never in bondage to any man,” they cried. At once Jesus set them upon a deeper search: “Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.” How surprising that they could get no vision of themselves! Their hearts ablaze with hate, their hands ready for murder, and yet they could be boastful of their piety! Christ himself explains the anomaly: “Ye are of your father the devil.”—Half Hours.