outh, makes none for woman when she is betrayed through the affections.

But this is the very point on which Jesus fixes as essential. "_The
woman loved much, therefore let her many sins be forgiven_," He says.
And a true reading of the story would seem to show that in uttering
this sublime verdict Jesus is not thinking of the woman's sudden and
pure love for Him; He is rather reviewing the entire nature of her
life. She had loved much--that is her history in a sentence. Cruelty
and unkindness, malice and bitterness, had no part in her misdoing.
She had been undone through the very sweetness of her nature, as
multitudes of women are. That which was her noblest attribute--her
power of affection--had been the minister of her ruin through lack of
wisdom and restraint. By love she had fallen, by love also she shall
be redeemed. Her sins were indeed many, but behind all her sins there
was an essential though perverted magnanimity of nature, and for the
sake of an essential good in her, which lay like a shining pearl at the
root of her debasement, she shall be forgiven.

Again a strange verdict, and one that must have seemed to the Pharisees
entirely immoral. "What becomes of justice?" is their whispered
comment. Jesus asserts His sense of justice by an exposition of the
character of Simon. Simon is destitute of love, of magnanimity, even
of courtesy. In his hard and formal nature there has been no room for
emotion; passion of any kind and he are strangers. Which nature is
radically the better, his or "this woman's"? Which presents the more
hopeful field to the moralist? The soil of Simon's heart is thin and
meagre; but in "this woman's" heart is a soil overgrown with weeds
indeed, but delicately tempered, rich and deep, in which the roots of
the fair tree of life may find abundant room and nourishment.
Therefore she shall be forgiven for her possibilities, and such
forgiveness is justice. To ignore these possibilities, to allow what
she has been utterly to overshadow the lovely vision of what she may
be, when once the soil is clear of weeds, and the real magnanimity of
her temperament is directed into noble uses, would be the most odious
form of injustice.

Such is the justice of Jesus, but, alas, after two thousand years we
still stand astonished at it, more than half doubtful of its validity,
and, if truth be told, secretly dismayed at its boldness. It is
romantic justice, we say, but is it practicable jus