The Empire of Love | Page 8

impossible to apply the principles of Jesus to the
administration of society. That is, at all events, an intelligible defense,
but is it a legitimate one? Was Jesus merely a romantic dreamer, with
entirely romantic views of love and justice? Was He a moral anarchist,
whose teachings, if interpreted in laws, would destroy the basis of
society? A strange thing indeed in human history if One who has been
loved as no other was ever loved by multitudes of men and women
through the ages, should prove after all to be an impracticable dreamer
or a moral anarchist!
But if Jesus was a dreamer, He dreamed true, and the very reason why
He is loved with such wide and deep devotion is that men do dimly, but
instinctively, perceive that His life presents the only perfect pattern of
life as it should be. Life, as it exists, is clearly not ordered on a social
system which any wise or good man can approve. Hence the wise and
good man is perpetually urged to the enquiry whether Jesus may not
after all have been right?
Jesus certainly acts as one who is right. He acts always with the assured
air of one for whom all debate is closed and henceforth impossible. He
knows His way, and the great moral dilemmas of life yield instantly to
His touch. He penetrates to their roots and makes us feel that He has
touched the essential element in them. The dreamer vindicates himself

by making it manifest that he sees deeper into the problem than the
moralist, and that his is after all the better morality because it is of
higher social value, and makes more directly for social reconciliation.
Let us take, for example, the judgment of Jesus upon the woman who
was a sinner in the house of Simon the Pharisee. The social dilemma of
the fallen woman is much more difficult of solution than that of the
prodigal son. We expect a certain power of moral convalescence in
youth which has been betrayed through folly. Sooner or later the manly
nature kindles with resentment at its own weakness. Moreover, social
law allows a certain opportunity of recuperation to man which it denies
to woman. The sin of the woman seems less pardonable, not because it
is worse in itself, but because it outrages a higher convention. Hence
the strict moralist who might make some allowance for the hot blood of
youth, makes none for woman when she is betrayed through the
affections.
But this is the very point on which Jesus fixes as essential. "The woman
loved much, therefore let her many sins be forgiven," He says. And a
true reading of the story would seem to show that in uttering this
sublime verdict Jesus is not thinking of the woman's sudden and pure
love for Him; He is rather reviewing the entire nature of her life. She
had loved much--that is her history in a sentence. Cruelty and
unkindness, malice and bitterness, had no part in her misdoing. She had
been undone through the very sweetness of her nature, as multitudes of
women are. That which was her noblest attribute--her power of
affection--had been the minister of her ruin through lack of wisdom and
restraint. By love she had fallen, by love also she shall be redeemed.
Her sins were indeed many, but behind all her sins there was an
essential though perverted magnanimity of nature, and for the sake of
an essential good in her, which lay like a shining pearl at the root of her
debasement, she shall be forgiven.
Again a strange verdict, and one that must have seemed to the Pharisees
entirely immoral. "What becomes of justice?" is their whispered
comment. Jesus asserts His sense of justice by an exposition of the
character of Simon. Simon is destitute of love, of magnanimity, even of

courtesy. In his hard and formal nature there has been no room for
emotion; passion of any kind and he are strangers. Which nature is
radically the better, his or "this woman's"? Which presents the more
hopeful field to the moralist? The soil of Simon's heart is thin and
meagre; but in "this woman's" heart is a soil overgrown with weeds
indeed, but delicately tempered, rich and deep, in which the roots of the
fair tree of life may find abundant room and nourishment. Therefore
she shall be forgiven for her possibilities, and such forgiveness is
justice. To ignore these possibilities, to allow what she has been utterly
to overshadow the lovely vision of what she may be, when once the soil
is clear of weeds, and the real magnanimity of her temperament is
directed into noble uses, would be the most odious form of injustice.
Such is the justice of Jesus, but, alas, after