r for which there
is no excuse. Nevertheless the false tradition, arising from early and
unjustifiable assumption, that this noble woman, distinctively a friend
of the Lord, is the same who, admittedly a sinner, washed and anointed
the Savior's feet in the house of Simon the Pharisee and gained the boon
of forgiveness through contrition, has so tenaciously held its place in
the popular mind through the centuries, that the name, Magdalene, has
come to be a generic designation for women who fall from virtue and
afterward repent. We are not considering whether the mercy of Christ
could have been extended to such a sinner as Mary of Magdala is wrongly
reputed to have been; man cannot measure the bounds nor fathom the
depths of divine forgiveness; and if it were so that this Mary and the
repentant sinner who ministered to Jesus as He sat at the Pharisee's
table were one and the same, the question would stand affirmatively
answered, for that woman who had been a sinner was forgiven. We are
dealing with the scriptural record as a history, and nothing said
therein warrants the really repellent though common imputation of
unchastity to the devoted soul of Mary Magdalene.

CHRIST'S AUTHORITY ASCRIBED TO BEELZEBUB.[593]

At the time of our Lord's earthly ministry, the curing of the blind,
deaf, or dumb was regarded as among the greatest possible achievements
of medical science or spiritual treatment; and the subjection or casting
out of demons was ranked among the attainments impossible to rabbinical
exorcism. Demonstrations of the Lord's power to heal and restore, even
in cases universally considered as incurable, had the effect of
intensifying the hostility of the sacerdotal classes; and they,
represented by the Pharisaic party, evolved the wholly inconsistent and
ridiculous suggestion that miracles were wrought by Jesus through the
power of the prince of devils, with whom He was in league.[594]

While the Lord was making His second missionary tour through Galilee,
going about through "all the cities and villages, teaching in their
synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every
sickness and every disease among the people,"[595] the absurd theory
that Christ was Himself a victim of demoniacal possession, and that He
operated by the power of the devil, was urged and enlarged upon until it
became the generally accepted explanation among the Pharisees and their
kind. Jesus had withdrawn Himself for a time