do with the business; the oldest not so old as to forget his sin, the
youngest not daring to say he was not already corrupt.

This reveals two things, the amount of unascertained guilt every man
carries with him, guilt that he is not distinctly conscious of, but that
a little shake awakens, and that weakens him all through his life in
ways that he may be unable to trace.

Further, this encounter of Jesus with the leading men gives significance
to His subsequent challenge: "Which of you convinceth Me of sin?" He had
shown them how easy it was to convict the guilty; but the very ease and
boldness with which He had touched their conscience convinced them His
own was pure. In a society honeycombed with vice He stood perfect,
untouched by evil.

This searching purity, this stainless mirror, the woman felt it more
difficult to face than the accusing scribes. Alone with Him who had so
easily unmasked their wickedness, she feels that now she has to do with
something much more awful than the accusations of men--the actual
irrevocable sin. There was no voice now accusing her, no hand laid in
arrest upon her. Why does she not go? Because, now that others are
silent, her own conscience speaks; now that her accusers are silenced,
she must listen to Him whose purity has saved her. The presence among us
of a true and perfect human holiness in the person of Christ, that is
the true touchstone of character; and he who does not feel that this is
what actually judges all his own ways and actions, has but a dim
apprehension of what human life is--of its dignity, its
responsibilities, its risks, its reality. Our sin, no doubt, hems us
round with a thousand disabilities, and fears, and anxieties in this
world, often dreadful to bear as the shame of this woman; there
gradually gathers round us a brood of mischiefs we have given birth to
by overstepping God's law, a brood that throngs our steps, and makes a
peaceful and happy life impossible. Other men come to recognise some of
our infirmities, and we feel the depressing influence of their
unfavourable judgment, and in the secresy of our own self-reflection we
think meanly of ourselves; but this, overwhelming as it sometimes
becomes, is not the worst of sin. Were all these evil consequences
abated or removed, were we as free from accusing voices, either from the
reflected judgment of the world or from our own memory, as that woman
when she stood _alone_ in the midst, yet there would then onl