Saviour was born amongst the people themselves and brought to Jerusalem to be presented to the Lord; a Saviour moreover who, as time went on, imparted His divine message to the poor and humble and declared that His Kingdom was not of this world. This was clearly what Mary meant when she said that God had "scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts," that He had "put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree." Christ was therefore doubly hateful to the Jewish hierarchy in that He attacked the privilege of the race to which they belonged by throwing open the door to all mankind, and the privilege of the caste to which they belonged by revealing sacred doctrines to the profane and destroying their claim to exclusive knowledge.
Unless viewed from this aspect, neither the antagonism displayed by the Scribes and Pharisees towards our Lord nor the denunciations He uttered against them can be properly understood. "Woe unto you, Lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered.... Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: tor ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in." What did Christ mean by the key of knowledge? Clearly the sacred tradition which, as Drach explains, foreshadowed the doctrines of Christianity. It was the Rabbis who perverted that tradition, and thus "the guilt of these