on by the new impulse of the new dispensation, they come towards the
light, they ask for peace, they throng to the heaven that opens in
Jesus. Simon embodies that vast array of influences that stand between
humanity and its redemption. He is a very excellent, a very estimable
man,--but he is not shocked at intemperance, he would not have slavery
disturbed, he sees a necessity for war. Does Christ know who and what
sort of a woman it is that touches him? Will he defile himself by such a
contact? Can he expect to accomplish anything by familiarity with such
matters? Why is he not satisfied with a good dinner? "Simon!" "Simon!"

The silence of the woman is wonderful, it is awful. What is most
profound, most agitating, most intense cannot speak; words are too
little for the greatness of feeling. So Job sat himself upon the ground
seven days and seven nights, speechless. Not in this case, as is said of
Schiller's Robbers, did the pent volcano find vent in power-words; not
in strong and terrible accents was uttered the hoarded wrath of long
centuries of misrule and oppression. The volcano, raging, aching, threw
itself in silence into the arms of one who could soothe and allay it.
The thunder is noisy and harmless. The lightning is silent,--and the
lightning splits, kills, consumes. Humanity had muttered its thunder for
ages. Its lightning, the condensed, fiery, fatal force of things, leaped
from the blackness of sin, threaded with terrific glare the vision of
man, and, in the person of the woman, fell hot and blasting at the feet
of Jesus, who quenched its fire, and of that destructive bolt made a
trophy of grace and a fair image of hope. She could not speak, and so
she wept,--like the raw, chilling, hard atmosphere, which is relieved
only by a shower of snow. How could she speak, guilty, remorseful
wretch, without excuse, without extenuation? In the presence of divine
virtue, at the tribunal of judgment, she could only weep, she could only
love. But, blessed be Jesus, he could forgive her, he can forgive all.