into her life. This scene, in which He was the chief
figure, must always have remained the most vivid picture in her memory;
and the more she thought of it the more clearly must she have seen how
different He was from all besides. And unless in our hearts Christ finds
a place, there is no other sufficient purifying influence. We may be
convinced He is all He claims to be, we may believe He is sent to save,
and that He can save; but all this belief may be without any cleansing
effect upon us. What is wanted is an attachment, a real love that will
prompt us always to regard His will, and to make our life a part of His.
It is our likings that have led us astray, and it is by new likings
implanted within us that we can be restored. So long as our knowledge of
Christ is in our head only, it may profit us a little, but it will not
make new creatures of us. To accomplish that, He must command our heart.
He must control and move what is most influential within us; there must
arise in us a real and ruling enthusiasm for Him.

Perhaps, however, the chief lesson taught by this incident is that the
best way to reform society is to reform ourselves. There is of course a
great deal done in our own day to reclaim the vicious, to succour the
poor, and so on; and nothing is to be said against these efforts when
they are the outcome of a humble and sympathising charity. But they are
very often adulterated with a spirit of condemnation and a sense of
superiority, which on closer inspection is found to be unjust. These
scribes and Pharisees, when they dragged this woman before Jesus, felt
themselves on quite another platform than that which she occupied; but
a word from Christ convinced them how hollow this self-righteous spirit
was. He made them feel that they too were sinners even as she, and none
of them was sufficiently hardened to lift a stone against her. This is
creditable to the Pharisees. There are many among us who would very
quickly have lifted the stone. Even while striving to reclaim the
drunkard, for example, they arraign him with an implacable ferocity that
shows they are quite unconscious of being sharers in his sin. If you
challenged them, they would clear themselves by vehemently protesting
that they had not touched strong drink for years; but do they not
consider that the almost universal intemperance of the lowest class in
society has a far deeper root than individual appetite; that it is
rooted in the whole miserable c