What did Jesus draw on the ground?
Here's George Matheson's response --
"Now Moses had written on stone his law of death against unchastity. Jesus by his gesture said: 'I write this day another law, a higher law. The law which I write on this pavement is "none but the pure can sentence." I demand a new jury for the old law of Moses - a jury of the first born in heaven. Shall this woman be judged by men who have avoided her temptation only be a counter sin -- who have escaped the overflow of feeling by suppressing feeling altogether!
She has done wrong to society by too much passion; have they done right by too little! Are there no poor around their doors unfed, no sick before their gates untended, no souls within their bounds untaught!" And He lifted up his eyes and said: 'Let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone!'
I do not for a moment suppose they were convicted of hypocrisy, nor that they had been guilty of hypocrisy. The sin of the woman had never been their sin; their indignation, so far as it went, had been sincere. But it had not gone far enough. They should have asked if their own passionlessness had not been responsible for this woman's passion, if their neglect of the poor had not caused the poor to grow up vicious. They did ask it now, with that blazing eye turned upon them and that piercing glance penetrating them. They asked it, and they fled from the answer.
"Now Moses had written on stone his law of death against unchastity. Jesus by his gesture said: 'I write this day another law, a higher law. The law which I write on this pavement is "none but the pure can sentence." I demand a new jury for the old law of Moses - a jury of the first born in heaven. Shall this woman be judged by men who have avoided her temptation only be a counter sin -- who have escaped the overflow of feeling by suppressing feeling altogether!
She has done wrong to society by too much passion; have they done right by too little! Are there no poor around their doors unfed, no sick before their gates untended, no souls within their bounds untaught!" And He lifted up his eyes and said: 'Let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone!'
I do not for a moment suppose they were convicted of hypocrisy, nor that they had been guilty of hypocrisy. The sin of the woman had never been their sin; their indignation, so far as it went, had been sincere. But it had not gone far enough. They should have asked if their own passionlessness had not been responsible for this woman's passion, if their neglect of the poor had not caused the poor to grow up vicious. They did ask it now, with that blazing eye turned upon them and that piercing glance penetrating them. They asked it, and they fled from the answer.
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