." They fall into the pit they have digged.

This answer was not a mere clever retort such as a self-possessed
antagonist can always command. It was not a mere dexterous evasion. What
these scribes would say of it to one another afterwards, or with what
nervous anxiety they would altogether avoid the subject, we can scarcely
conjecture; but probably none of them would affect to say, as has since
been said, that it was a confounding of things that differ, that by
demanding that every one who brought an accusation, against another
should himself be open to no accusation Jesus subverted the whole
administration of law. For what criminal could fear condemnation, if his
doom were to be suspended until a judge whose heart is as pure as his
ermine be found who may pronounce it? Might not these scribes have
replied that they were quite aware that they themselves were guilty men,
but no law could lay hold of any outward actions of theirs, and that
they were there not to talk of their relation to God or of purity of
heart, but to vindicate the outward purity of the morals of their city
by bringing to judgment this offender? They did not thus bandy words
with our Lord, and they could not; because they knew that it was not He
who was trying to confound private morality and the administration of
law but themselves. They had brought this woman to Jesus as if He were a
magistrate, though often enough He had declined to interfere with civil
affairs and with the ordinary administration of justice. And in His
answer He still shows the same spirit of non-interference. He does not
pronounce upon the woman's guilt at all. Had they taken her before their
ordinary courts He would have raised no word in her favour; did her
husband after this prosecute her he can have feared no interference on
the part of Jesus. His answer is the answer not of one pronouncing from
a judgment-seat, nor of a legal counsel, but of a moral and spiritual
teacher. And in this capacity He had a perfect right to say what He did.
We have no right to say to an official who in condemning culprits or in
prosecuting them is simply discharging a public duty, "See that your own
hands be clean, and your own heart pure, before you condemn another,"
but we have a perfect right to silence a private individual who is
officiously and not officially exposing another's guilt, by bidding him
remember that he has a beam in his own eye which he must first be rid
of, a stain on his own ha