The Unchaste Life
The Bible is the most dramatic book in the world. It introduces its characters and its scenes without preface. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that it does not introduce them at all. It does not show us a dropping of the old curtain and a lifting of the new. There is no curtain. You find yourself suddenly, unexpectedly, without prelude and without preparation, in the midst of new surroundings and in the centre of fresh lives. The narrative of the life of Jesus is conducted on the same principles. There is no line of demarcation between to-day and to-morrow. You are at one moment in the streets of Nazareth, and the next in the market-place of Capernaum; and there is no record of a transition from the one to the other. The Book which most professes to be inspired of God has left the largest margin to the imagination of man.
Nowhere is the principle more marked than at the stage of the life of Jesus at which we have now arrived. We found Him preparing for Jerusalem; we left Him at the gates of Samaria in pursuance of His journey. We expect that the next stage of the narrative will be a record of His entrance into the Holy City. We deem that if the approach to Samaria is recorded, much more will be the approach to Jerusalem. But when the next scene opens, the journey is already completed; we are told that Jesus has gone up ‘secretly.’ We see Him walking the streets of Jerusalem as if He had been there for years. He has already taken His place as teacher, monitor, legislator. We are conscious of a seemingly abrupt change. The man who had wandered depressed under the shadows of Hermon, the man who had seemed to hide himself from the sight of the sepulchre, blazes forth in the heart of Jerusalem into the aspect of a lawgiver — not the lawgiver to an individual, not the lawgiver to a league of pity, not the lawgiver even to the Jewish nation, but a lawgiver to the race of Man.
And, as we stand in the great gallery, we ask, Is this the same Portrait? Is this the same Jesus whom we saw weighted with the thought of death? Many have answered, No. Many have said that some after -hand has touched the Portrait. Not so say I. To me the change is profoundly natural, the only thing that would have been natural. When you speak of an abrupt transition from depression to confidence, you forget what has intervened — the vision of the exodus. You forget that on the heights of Hermon the eye of Jesus has gazed upon the prospect ef resurrection. The sepulchre itself is not a whit less repulsive; the thing which He dreaded in the thought of death remains to Him dreadful still; but He has seen a light beyond the sepulchre. Not yet has it dawned upon Him that death itself would be His brightest crown; but there has broken on Him the sight of Easter Morning, and the possibility of a second worldly birth. Entering by degrees into the full revelation of His Father, He had come to a place where He could rest in hope. It did not guarantee the success of His present mission, but it opened up the prospect of a new mission. It suggested that He might begin again under fresh auspices, and that the path abandoned in tears might by a second effort be resumed in joy.
Accordingly, Jesus enters Jerusalem with a new hope in His heart. It is not a hope for the renovation of His present enterprise, but for the inauguration of a second enterprise. None the less did it lend elasticity to His steps and strength to His soul. In the midst of the Feast of Tabernacles He stands in the temple as a lawgiver. In the courts of that house from which He had expelled the buyers and sellers He now appears as the legislator on a weightier matter. On the very threshold of this Jerusalem ministry we are confronted by an incident which has transfixed the attention of the world. It occurs in our version of John’s gospel, though it is doubtful whether it formed an original part of that gospel. At all events, it comes from a record of the apostolic age and demands a place in any study of the Portrait of Jesus. It has been said that in the place which it occupies in John’s gospel it interrupts the narrative. It does not, at all events, interrupt the stream of the development. I could not imagine for it any more appropriate place than that which it now holds in the life of Jesus. Whoever inserted it in its present position must have been a man of great discernment and a mind of deep poetic insight. Let us stand in the gallery and examine this phase of the Picture.
Jesus had for some days been teaching in the temple. He had made a powerful impression on all but the Pharisaic party. There were hundreds ready to receive Him as Messiah; there were hundreds who, without going so far, were prepared to consider it an open question. His Jerusalem ministry had as yet been all verbal; but His words had been very bold. His voice in the temple had been the counterpart of His voice in the desert. In the desert He had been speaking to the working-classes, and therefore He had appealed to man’s sense of toil: ‘Come unto me, ye that labour, and I will give you rest ‘; in the temple He was speaking to the intellectual classes, and therefore He had appealed to a different sense: * If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.’ Like the invitation in the desert, the invitation in the temple had come with the joy of Jesus. It was not, indeed, that perfect joy He had experienced in the desert. It was rather a breaking than a lifting of the cloud — rather a sight of coming dawn than an actual sense of illumination. Yet, such as it was, it was stimulative; and the principle was again revealed, that sympathetic enthusiasm has its ultimate source not in the grief but in the gladness of the soul.
To keep alive this dayspring, to keep alive this thought of resurrection as distinct from death, Jesus goes in the evening of one of these days to the Mount of Olives; He desires in the presence of the Mount of Olives to fan His memory of the Mount of Hermon. All night He spends in imbibing this joy. He returns in the morning and resumes His labours in the temple. Suddenly, in the midst of His discourse, there is an interruption. There is a commotion at the door, and the attention of the crowd is arrested. A party of the Pharisees enter, hurrying into the presence of Jesus the unwilling steps of an unfortunate woman. She has violated the law of female chastity. For such a violation Moses had imposed the penalty of death. That penalty had long become obsolete. But the accusers of this woman said, ‘Whoever claims to be the Messiah ought to revive it.’ You miss the point altogether, in my opinion, if you imagine that they only wished to involve Jesus in a question of theory. They wanted Him, on the strength of His Messianic claim, to condemn the woman to be stoned. They held, and I think rightly, that if Jesus should
1 I believe John viii. 6 to be an addition to the original narrative — the explanatory note of an early commentator. I think the original narrative does not lend itself to that explanation. The Pharisees seem to me to have had a genuine horror of the woman.
say, * Let her die,’ public opinion was running so high in His favour that the mandate would be obeyed by the multitude. True, He would then be the enemy of Rome, to whom alone the power of inflicting death belonged. But ought not the Messiah to be independent of Rome! If Jesus were Messiah, should He not rule from sea to sea! Should He not establish the kingdom of Israel on the top of the mountains! Was the authority of Moses ideally inferior to that of Caesar! Was not the law of Moses God’s law! If Moses enacted death for the breach of female chastity, was not that at the same time the enactment of Heaven! Why should not Jesus, if He were Messiah, revive the old penalty against the morally impure!
I believe this act of the Pharisees was an honest attempt to put the pretensions of Jesus to the proof. They selected for the trial their own field — the field of morality. They said, ‘We have grave doubts of the claims of Jesus; but we will give him a chance in the sphere we think the most important — the sphere of social chastity.’ I have no doubt whatever that their animus against the woman was genuine. This particular kind of sin was precisely the one from which a Pharisee was apt to be free. There are cases in which Satan casts out Satan; there are men and women who are exempt from certain vices simply through the presence of other vices. A cold, phlegmatic nature would never commit the sins of Robert Burns. This does not justify Robert Burns; but it shows that one disease may be cured by another disease. It is a matter of daily experience that the advent of a new ailment may cause an already existing ailment to subside; there are forms of physical illness which cannot live together. There are forms of moral illness which are also mutually antagonistic. I cannot imagine that the typical Judas Iscariot could ever have been guilty of that form of sin which characterised this woman. The man who could carefully
1 I use the phrase ’ the typical Judas Iscariot ’ because, as I shall hereafter show, the prevalent conception of him is not my own.
count out thirty pieces of silver as the price of his Lord’s betrayal would never have committed the miscalculations of her who squandered life, reputation, respectability, on the sensuous passion of an hour.
The Pharisees, then, were, up to their light, quite honest. They wanted a drastic reform of social morals — a reform which should con sist, not in purifying, but in eliminating, the sinner. They were willing that Jesus should peril His claim to Messiahship on the test of His ability to initiate that reform. They bring the trembling culprit before His judgment-seat. ‘Revive’ they cried, ‘the hand writing of Moses — the law of death against unchastity! ‘And here there occurs a remarkable scene — a scene which has puzzled the commentators. As the accusers are speaking, Jesus stoops down and writes, with His finger, on the ground. What does He mean? The popular answer has always been, ‘He wants to show that He is paying no attention.’ I cannot accept that answer. It was not a case for paying no attention; it was a case for very
VOL. II, G great attention indeed. Jesus had been appealed to as the guardian of social morals. Was such an appeal to be treated with contempt, or even with the appearance of contempt! The Pharisees had proposed a grave problem — had, as I think, honestly proposed it. They had brought before Jesus a matter which was near to their hearts; was Jesus to adopt a gesture which would indicate that they were speaking to the empty air! We must seek a better solution of the handwriting on the ground.
And I think we can find it. Moses had written on stone his law of death against unchastity. Jesus by his gesture said: ‘I write this day another law, a higher law. The law which I write on this pavement is “none but the pure can sentence.” I demand a new jury for the old law of Moses — a jury of the first born in heaven. Shall this woman be judged by men who have avoided her temptation only by a counter sin — who have escaped the overflow of feeling by suppressing feeling altogether! * She has done wrong to society by too much passion; have they done right by too little! Are there no poor around their doors unfed, no sick before their gates untended, no souls within their bounds untaught! ‘And He lifted up His eyes and said: ‘Let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone at her! ’
Then there happens a strange thing. The accusers go out one by one. I think they were afraid of the clairvoyance of Jesus — afraid lest He should expose them to the crowd. I do not for a moment suppose they were convicted of hypocrisy, nor that they had been guilty of hypocrisy. The sin of the woman had never been their sin; their indignation, so far as it went, had been sincere. But it had not gone far enough. They should have asked if their own passionlessness had not been responsible for this woman’s passion, if their neglect of the poor had not caused the poor to grow up vicious. They did ask it now — with that blazing eye turned upon them and that piercing glance penetrating them. They asked it, and they fled from the answer. One by one they left the judgment-seat, until of all the actors in that scene there remained but two — the criminal and the judge.
Paul says that the immediate judgment of the soul at death is before Jesus only; we ‘depart to be with Christ.’ Was he thinking of this scene — the criminal and the judge alone? It is impressive enough for any picture-gallery. It is pure and absolute contrast; night stands starless in the presence of the day. And what is the verdict of the day upon the night? It is a strange verdict: 1 You are black; but I send you towards the sun. You are guilty; but I bury your yesterday. You are unworthy to live; but you shall live to be worthy. I condemn you, and I absolve you. I blame your past, and I wipe it out for ever. Begin afresh; try again; start free. You will be judged by deeds to come, not by days departed; go and sin no more! ’
And now you will understand why I have placed this narrative here, and not elsewhere. Whence this hopefulness of the Great Physician, who of all others had the deepest sense of sin’s malignity? Why should Jesus have seen a chance for this woman in the future which she had not found yesterday or to-day? I answer, because He had stood on Mount Hermon, because He had seen the exodus. He had gazed on the possibility of a resurrection life. He had seen in anticipation a glorifying of the frail environment. He had seen the glorified body with its glorified prospects. He had beheld a break in the old heredity — a new stream of life impregnating and counteracting the blood of the first Adam. And there had risen within Him a great hope — a hope for the totally depraved, a hope of new conditions even for the dead in trespasses and in sin. It was this that made the pure Son of Man more sanguine for the bad than were the impure Pharisees.
THEREFORE, Son of Man, I come to
Thee I will not accept the Pharisee
as my judge. He has never stood on Mount
Hermon; he has never seen the exodus. He has far less hope of me than Thou hast. My human judges have no sight of the Resurrection Morning, no sight of the new environment that is coming to me. They do not see my future possibilities. Send them all out, O Lord! Dismiss them from the temple where they stand, accusing! Debar them from the judgment-seat one by one! And when they have all departed, let me stand alone with Thee — the only pure, the only stainless One! Let my night be confronted not by their candle, but by Thy day I would have no lamp to search my soul but the flaming lamp of heaven. I shall only be judged in righteousness when I am alone with Thee.