WORDS WRITTEN ON THE SAND

WORDS WRITTEN ON THE SAND

On an occasion at Jerusalem, Jesus found Himself be­fore a woman—the Adulteress. A shouting crowd pushed her forward. The woman, hiding her face with her hands and with her hair, stood before Him, without speaking. Jesus had taught that wife and husband should be perfectly one, and He detested adultery. But He detested still more the cowardice of tale-bearers, the hounding by the merciless, and the nerve of sinners presuming to set themselves up as judges of sin. Jesus could not forgive the woman who had brutally disobeyed the law of God, but He did not wish to condemn her, because her accusers had no right to be seeking her death. And He stooped down and with His finger wrote upon the ground. It is the first and last time that we see Jesus lower Himself to this trivial operation. No one has ever known what He wrote at that moment, standing there before the woman trembling in her shame, like a deer set upon by a pack of snarling hounds. He chose the sand on which to write ex­pressly that the wind might carry away the words, which would perhaps frighten men if they could read them. But the shame­less persecutors insisted that the woman should be stoned. Then Jesus lifted Himself up, looked deep into their eyes and souls, one by one: "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." (John 8:7)

We are all of us guilty of the faults of our brothers. From the first to the last we are all daily accomplices, although too often unpunished. The Adulteress would not have betrayed her husband if men had not tempted her, if her husband had made himself better loved; the thief would not rob if the rich man's heart were not so hard; the assassin would not kill if he had not been harshly treated; there would be no pros­titutes if men knew how to crush their depravity. Only the innocents would have the right to judge; but on this earth there are no innocents, and even if there were, their mercy would be stronger than justice itself.

Such thoughts had never occurred to those angry spies, but Christ's words troubled them. Every one of them thought of his own betrayals, his own secret and perhaps recent sins of the flesh. Every soul there was like a sewer which when the stone is raised exhales a fetid gust of nauseous vapor. The old men were the first to go. Then, little by little, all the others, avoiding each other's eyes, scattered and dispersed. The open place was empty. Jesus had again stooped down to write upon the ground. The woman had heard the shuffling of the depart­ing feet, and heard no longer any voice crying for her death, but she did not dare to raise her eyes because she knew that One alone had remained, the Innocent,—the only one who had the right to throw against her the deadly stones. Jesus for the second time lifted Himself up and saw no one.

"Woman, where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee?" (John 8:10)

"No man, Lord."

"Neither do I condemn thee: go and sin no more."

And for the first time the Adulteress dared to look in the face of her liberator. She did not understand His words. What she had done was evidently a sin in His eyes because he commanded her to "sin no more"; and yet he had so acted that the others did not condemn her. And now He also did not wish to condemn her. What man was this so different from all the others, who hated sin but forgave the sinner? She would have wished to turn to Him with a question, to murmur a word of thanks, to reward Him at least with a smile, because her soul was weak and her lips beautiful. But Jesus had begun again to write on the ground of the court, His head lowered, and she saw only the silky waves of His hair shining in the sun, and His finger moving slowly over the sunlit earth.