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 justice? We might at least remember that what we call practicable justice has never yet attained the gracious results of Christ's romantic justice. Simon the Pharisee knows no more how to deal with "this woman" than the elder brother knew how to deal with the prodigal. Such sense of justice as they possessed would have infallibly driven the penitent boy back to the comradeship of harlots, and have refused the penitent harlot the barest chance of reformation. Is not this enough to make the least discerning of us all suspect that Pharisees and elder brothers, for all their immaculate respectability of life, are by no means qualified to pass judgment on these tragedies of life with which they have no acquaintance, and cannot have an understanding sympathy? Does not the entire failure of legal justice with all its apparatus of punishment and repression, to give the sinner a vital impulse to withdraw from his sin, drive us to the conclusion, or at least to the hope, that there must be some better method of dealing with sinners than is sanctioned by conventional justice? There is another method—it is Christ's method. And the thing to be observed is that whereas conventional justice must certainly have failed in either of these crucial instances, the romantic justice of Jesus—if we must so call it—completely succeeded. The woman who was a sinner sinned no more, and the penitent son henceforth lived a new life of purity and obedience. In each case love is justified, and proves itself the highest justice.
LOVE AND FORGIVENESS
LOVE'S PROFIT
What profits all the hate that we have known
The bitter words, not all unmerited?
Have hearts e'er thriven beneath our angry frown?
Have roses grown from thistles we have sown?
Or lucid dawns flowered out of sunsets red?
Lo, all in vain
The violence that added pain to pain,
And drove the sinner back to sin again.
We had been wiser had we walked Love's way
We had been happier had we tenderer been,
We had found sunlight in the cloudiest day
Had we but loved the souls that went astray,
And sought from shame their many faults to screen
Lo, they and we
Had thus escaped Life's worst Gethsemane,
And found the Garden where the angels be.
For One there was who, angry, drew no sword,
Derided, wept for those who wrought Him wrong,
And at the last attained this great reward,
That those who injured Him acclaimed Him Lord,
And wove His story into holiest song.
So sinners wrought
For Him the Kingdom He had vainly sought,
And to His feet the world's frankincense brought.
V
LOVE AND FORGIVENESS
In these instances it is the singular completeness of Christ's forgiveness which is the most startling feature. It would be a libel on human nature to say that men do not forgive each other, but human forgiveness usually has reservations, reticences, conditions. Jesus taught unlimited forgiveness, and what He taught He practiced.
"Then came Peter, and said to Him, 'Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Until seven times?' Jesus said unto him, 'I say not unto thee, until seven times; but until seventy times seven.'"