There is a difficulty here. The Law does indeed attach the penalty of death to this offence, but not specifically stoning. Nor is it quite clear what these people were aiming at, though they evidently hoped to find something in the answer upon which they could base an accusation. Had they heard that Jesus was very far from orthodox on the subject of the marriage laws? At any rate they knew that he had shown an offensive leniency towards people of bad character; so perhaps they hoped that by condoning so shameful an offence he would lower himself in the eyes of the people, and appear to sanction the grossest immorality, while at the same time giving them grounds for a legal accusation. However this may be, Jesus made no reply, — did not even rebuke their malice, but bending down and making lines on the ground with his finger, as though he were thinking of something else, left them to their own consciences. But they did not feel this tacit rebuke, and impatiently repeated their question. Then he looked up with a piercing glance and said, "If any one of you is without sin, let him cast the first stone at her!" Then he bent down again and made lines on the ground as before. It was as much as to say, "Go on, and let the law take its course, if you can justify yourselves in doing so. If any of you can declare himself free from all impurity of thought, word, or deed, let him come forward as a witness at the trial and the execution."1 This shaft had struck. The pious accusers looked down. Their consciences were roused, and one by one they slunk away, the most distinguished first, troubling themselves no further about the wretched woman, who still stood riveted to the spot, half stupefied with remorse and shame. In a few moments Jesus raised his head again, and seeing no one there but his own hearers and the woman, he said to the latter, "Where are your accusers? Has not one of them condemned you?" No, Lord!" she murmured. Neither do I con 66 demn you. Go, and sin no more!" said Jesus. Then would he have left every crime unpunished? That was not the question. In referring the matter to Jesus, these men had removed it from the court of civil law into the very different court of the private conscience. Jesus therefore simply declared that God was better served by forbearing pity for the sinful woman than by the strict enforcing of the law. Judged in the court of conscience, he denied that his contemporaries, who so shamelessly contracted and dissolved 1 Compare Deuteronomy xvii. 7. the marriage tie without violating the Law, had any right to utter sentence on the adulteress. It seems rather improbable, however, that Jesus should have found it so easy to arouse the conscience of these self-righteous devotees; and the story, though very beautiful, is open to suspicion both on this ground and on those already hinted at. We may also add that its origin is a matter of doubt. It stands at present in the eighth chapter of John, but is certainly out of place there. It evidently belongs to the same circle of stories as those in the Synoptics, and should be placed in the account of the last conflict of Jesus. It is no longer possible for us to tell why it is not there. For the various reasons indicated, it deserves less confidence than the other records of the encounters of Jesus with the differe. t parties among his people during the closing weeks of his 1 fe. In the cases hitherto examined, the opponents of Jesus were intent upon drawing him into utterances in conflict with the Law, or dangerous to the public tranquillity, and so involving him with the ecclesiastical or civil authorities. But this was not always their object. Sometimes they simply tried to drive him into a corner and expose him before all the people by means of some insoluble question. A few examples of these questions also have been preserved. One day, for instance, certain Sadducees began to argue with him about the resurrection. They probably took occasion to do so from an address to the people in which he had spoken of the coming of the kingdom of God, when the pious dead should return from the underworld and live again.1 Now the worldly-minded and conservative Sadducees contemptuously rejected the doctrines which had risen since the formation of their own party, — such as the belief in a resurrection and the elaborate doctrine of the angels,2-especially if they had sprung from the bosom of the national party, and were fostered by the enthusiasm of the zealots, which was preeminently the case with the doctrine of the resurrection. Indeed, they looked with suspicion and dislike upon the preaching of the kingdom of God in general. It was but seldom that the Sadducees were among the hearers of Jesus; and this is perhaps the first time that we find him in contact with them, except on the single occasion of their demanding 66 his authority for what he did. It seems, however, that some of them happened to be present when he was speaking on this very question of the resurrection; so they urged a difficulty which had doubtless more than once done good service against the Pharisees. Rabbi!" they said, "you were speaking just now of the resurrection; but how will it be? Take an instance. You know the Law of Moses says that when a man dies childless, his brother must marry his widow, and the eldest son must bear the dead man's name.1 Now there was once a family of seven brothers; and the eldest of them married, but died childless, so the next took his widow; but he died without children too, and the widow was taken by the third. And so it went on till all the seven brothers had married her, and all had died childless. Finally the woman died herself. Now when they all rise again, whose wife will she be?- for all the seven were married to her!" -- Whether this had really occurred or not was a matter of no consequence. It was possible; and that was enough to give the Sadducees a right to treat it as actual. We must also concede that it raised an unanswerable objection to the doc trine of the resurrection as conceived by the Jews, that is to say, as a renewal under more favorable circumstances of the former life. But for Jesus the difficulty did not exist; for he had formed a far more spiritual conception of the new life in the kingdom of God. So he struck the broad principle at once and went to the very root of the matter in his answer, which may be paraphrased thus: "The denial of the resurrection rests upon a two-fold misconception, upon want of insight into the Holy Scriptures, and misapprehension of the power of God revealed in the saints. For they neither marry nor are given in marriage when they have risen again, but live here on earth as the angels live in heaven: such is the power of God revealed in his children. And, as for the doctrine of the Scriptures about a new life following after death, have you never read the chapter of the Thornbush,' in the books of Moses,2 where God says, I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob'? Now, surely, He is the God of the living and not of the dead!" It must be admitted that Jesus put a far deeper and richer meaning into the text he quoted than it originally had, but this does not at all surprise us; and, judged by the rules of 2 See vol. 1. p. 255. 1 See vol. i. pp. 425 ff. 8 6 · interpretation and style of argument current at the time, his proof of immortality was so complete that his questioners were absolutely silenced and his hearers were filled with amazement. He meant," If God called himself the God of the patriarchs centuries after they were dead, we are forced to the conclusion that they are not dead for ever, but will rise again. He is too great to be a God of lifeless shades; and man, whose God he deigns to call himself, is too great to remain a shadow for eternity. And when the power of God reveals itself in all its glory at the resurrection, relations will spring up between man and man upon the renovated earth so completely unlike those known at present that they can only fitly be compared with the intercourse of angels." Luke, the latest of our three Evangelists, elaborates the words of Jesus thus: "Those who dwell in the world as it now is marry and are given in marriage; but those who are accounted worthy to rise from the dead and share the perfect life that shall be will no longer marry or be given in marriage. Neither will they any longer be subject to death, for they will be like. the angels; and, inasmuch as they share the resurrection, they will have a portion in the life and glory of God himself. And as for the shades, read the chapter of the Thornbush,' where God says, I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob!' Now, surely, He is the God of the living and not of the dead; for in His eye the shades have already risen." Such additions to the words of Jesus may well be justified on the principle that the exalted conceptions seized and uttered by him necessarily imply still more than he himself could see, through the trammels laid upon him by the current notions of his age. If he expected the power of God to wake a new and glorious form of life in the faithful at the hour of the resurrection, after a more or less protracted sleep in death, we are justified in going a step further and rising to the hope that the spirit of man, educated and hallowed by God in this life, will rise at once to the higher life at the very moment of death. If he thought the bond between God and his dutiful children too close to be finally loosed by death, we accept the thought in all its fulness, and declare that not only is it impossible for this tie to be broken eternally, but it cannot be broken for a moment! God's children cannot be lifeless shadows even for a time. In a word, Jesus was defending the belief that we shall return to life; but in doing so he laid the firm foundation for the hope that we shall never die. 1 Luke xx. 34-38. There were probably certain Pharisees present at this encounter; and in any case it soon came to their ears that Jesus had silenced their opponents on the very point upon which they had so often disputed with them. Under other circumstances this would have given them great delight; but, since they were just now combining with their natural enemies against this formidable rival, they found small satisfaction in their discomfiture. They laid their heads together, and one of them who was deeply read in the Law took occasion, probably by the Master's teaching on some other day, to ask him a test question often discussed in the rabbinical schools: **Rabbi, which is the first commandment in the Law?" Without reserve or ambiguity Jesus answered, “ "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and sense.' 1 This is the first great commandment. And the second is like it, and is this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments all the Law and the Prophets are built." 2 8 Luke does not mention this conversation here, but makes the Scribes applaud Jesus for having refuted the Sadducees. In this he follows Mark, who represents the questioner as coming to Jesus without any sinister design whatever, and testifying to his complete agreement with him by enthusiastically repeating his answer: "Yes, Rabbi! it is true. The Lord our God is the one Lord, and there is no God but He; and to love Him with all the heart and mind and strength, and to love one's neighbor as one's self, is more than any sacrifice or burnt offering." Then Jesus, on his side, testifies to the Scribe's true insight in the words, “ You are not far from the kingdom of God." Whatever we may think of these divergences they do not touch the essence of the matter, which is the conjunction by Jesus of these two verses from the fifth and the third book of Moses. This is far more than a lucky hit. Jesus uttered his whole soul in it. With good cause has Christendom devoted its special attention to these words, and attached the utmost value to them. They tell us what Jesus held to be the essence of religion, for we must not suppose that he was summing up the Israelitish religion in distinction from his In the first place he never recognized any such distinction; for we know that, in his attack upon the conception of piety current in his own generation, he regarded himself own. 1 Deuteronomy vi. 5. See pp. 298-301. 2 Leviticus xix. 18. |