of both servants to their master is caused,
and consequently measured by, the forgiveness which they had received:
one having obtained the remission of a small debt, loved the forgiver a
little; the other, having obtained the remission of a great debt, loved
the forgiver much. In any such case, however, love springs up strong in
proportion, not to the absolute amount of the debt remitted, but to the
estimate of its amount which the debtor himself has formed. This
principle must be kept in view when we apply the lesson of the parable
to Simon. The Scripture does not concede that the amount of forgiveness
that he needed and obtained was in respect to that of the poor woman as
fifty to five hundred: the Scripture does not even determine that Simon
was, in point of fact, forgiven at all. In its application to the case
in hand, the Lord's instruction is equivalent to the conditional
formula, If you have been forgiven fifty pence, and she five hundred,
whether will she or you experience the more fervent gratitude to your
common benefactor? This, I think, is the only true and consistent method
of applying the parable to the experience of the woman and the Pharisee.
The point on which all the weight should lean is not the absolute amount
of guilt incurred by the sinner and forgiven by God, but the estimate
made by the sinner of his own sin, and his consequent appreciation of
the boon he receives when it is unconditionally blotted out. This view,
besides being in itself right, possesses this practical advantage, that
it steers entirely clear of the entangling question, If the greatest
sinner, when forgiven, loves his Forgiver most, will not he be happiest
at last who is the guiltiest now? There is no place here or elsewhere in
the Scriptures for such a speculation: it is not admissible in any
form. The conception which the parable produces when legitimately
applied is at once beautiful and beneficent: love to the Saviour rises
in the heart of a saved man in proportion to the sense which he
entertains of his own sinfulness on the one hand, and the mercy of God
on the other. Thus the height of a saint's love to the Lord is as the
depth of his own humility: as this root strikes down unseen in the
ground, that blossoming branch rises higher in the sky.

The woman did not speak of her own acts, either within herself or to her
neighbours; but her acts are, notwithstanding, proclaimed and recorded.
They are minutely catalogued (ver. 44-