Precept and Practice – SEPTEMBER 22 – Sinners and Judgment

When Jesus reclined at the table of the Pharisee, and shocked him by allowing a woman who had been a sinner to find admission on the plea of discipleship, and the new reverential affections of her nature broke forth in passionate gratitude, he gave no check and no rebuke, nor simply a cautious sanction.   The convictions which rebuke serves to awaken were already there:  to reproach would be to crush the fallen:  she had discovered the depth of her misery, and yearned for the profound compassion suited to so great a woe:  Jesus knew that one who had been stricken by a love so pure and penitential as hers needed only to have that love fostered and trained to act;  and so, casting himself with a bold faith on the capacities of a truly melted soul, he declared her sins forgiven.   But where again no such penitence appeared, and to resort to him was not spontaneous but compulsory, as in the case of the woman taken in adultery, striking neutrality of treatment.   To a mind heated with so dreadful and public a shame, to administer reproach would be cruelty, to give consolation would be danger;  and he simply wards off the savage penalties of the law, and turns all his direct dealings upon her foul and sanctimonious informers.   Their conscience persuades them that he knows their secret history, and they skulk away, the accused instead of the accusers;  while on the people that stand by is impressed the awful truth, that sinners are not fit to judge of sin.

(James Martineau)

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From the Introduction to Precept and Practice

The kindly welcome given to my other little books, ‘Being and Doing’ and ‘Character and Conduct,’ must be my excuse for adding another collection of extracts to the number now in circulation.

The quotations are gathered from the books of many earnest thinkers, and deal with Life in all its length and breadth, with ourselves, our characters, our plain unvarnished faults and weaknesses, our often untoward circumstances, and with all that drags us down;-  with our purposes, our religion, our love and friendships, and with all that uplifts us;-  with our relation to others, our influence and responsibilities, and finally with those stages of our journey which bring us to the Road’s Last Turn and to the Silent Land.

CONSTANCE  M. WHISHAW