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where she dreaded to find only a flaming sword. Then the tender pathetic appeal, into which the Saviour's communion with the Father glided, completed the conquest of her nature. Hope flashed its light into her spirit. Life had now some worth to her. It was worth while even to battle with this tyrannous evil, for there was born within her a hope that it might be forgiven and conquered. When the crowd broke up, she marked that Simon had bidden the Saviour to the banquet. These ostentatious entertainments admitted the poor to behold their splendour, and to gather the crumbs from the loaded board. After a while, clasping something hidden in her bosom, she glided in among the guests; kneeling in the shadow of His couch, and grasping the precious casket, on which, perhaps, she had spent all her living, and which, with love's sure instinct, she had provided against this need, she looked eagerly on the scene. We can imagine how she would drink in the music of the voice of the Saviour, and feel that the breath of His presence stirred the torpid faculties of her spirit, and quickened the numbed affections of her heart. Silently she watched what men would do to this matchless teacher, how they would distinguish with their honours Him whose tones had poured new life into the poor sinner's bruised and bleeding heart. Scorn and indignation struggled in a bosom

already bursting with emotion, when she saw that they wilfully dishonoured Him. Rising at length with the dignity of reverence and the beauty of love, her pent-up passion burst forth in a flood of uncontrollable weeping. Then she broke the box which she had borne in her bosom, and shed on Him its odour like incense. Bathing His feet with her tears, and wiping them with her silken hair, she wrote this lasting record-to the confusion of the mocking guests, and the eternal shame of their host-thus the outcasts of earth can greet the Lord, who left His throne and the bliss of the Father's bosom to save them, to wipe the tears of broken-hearted mourners, lighten the darkness of hope-abandoned prodigals, and break the yoke, though He himself should die in the effort, by which Satan's captives were being led down into the deepest depths of hell.

In treating this subject more fully I shall try to analyse

I. The secret springs of the poor sinner's conduct.

II. The nature of the action, which was viewed so diversely by the Pharisees and the Lord.

I. The springs of the woman's conduct.

The woman was "a sinner." Into the precise form or extent of her transgression there is no need to pry. The word was very significant; a "lost

woman" would be its equivalent now. The sin was one which filled her whole consciousness. There was no chance of her forgetting it, poor outcast! known, shunned, hated, by man, and -men told her too, the priests and doctors of her day by the angels, and by God.

The springs of her action, perhaps, lie here.

"Come

1. In her desperate self-abandonment the Lord had lit one ray of hope within her spirit. unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." What sin-crushed spirit would not leap to hear such words from such divine lips? Despair is the devil's own instrument. The first step in the reformation of the most abandoned profligates is to get them to care for themselvesto think themselves worth the care. How many men are there who, heart-sick of sin, loathing it in their better moments with an intensity which no Pharisee can measure, yet practise it recklessly day by day. Why? Because they see nothing beyond; and nothing in themselves worth saving for a higher destiny. Black clouds close their future; or if they lift they grow lurid. "What, then, is the use of struggling?" they cry; "Fate is against us, to sin is our destiny, and the punishment of sin is our doom. If we break the chain-what then? What is there for us to do, to be, or to become, beyond?" And so the habit, though hated, tyrannizes. There is

no strength in the springs of action, because no hope. They feel themselves contemptible and loathly; and they make up their minds, seeing no better within their reach, to drag about with them the dead carcase of their sin--many with a half-conscious notion that what they suffer may help to atone. He speaks the word of life to them who first makes them feel that they have a future, that there is a soul within them still which God cares for, searches after, and at any cost of suffering would save. And when this thought first flashes its ray of hope into the spirit, the loathings and the longings which the poor sinner had long been crushing, start up with a new and terrible vitality. "Men, you have wronged me, poor outcast that I am, trampling me on your dunghills among your rubbish and offal, as a thing too far gone, too tainted to the core, to live again a human life. I know now that I am a spirit still. God tells me that there is that within me which is worth Redemption. I arise at His call and go forth, though a baptism of tears and blood be before me, to meet a spirit's destiny."

Doubtless, this poor sinner had long loathed her vocation. Doubtless, the burning blush of shame had often stained her cheek, and tears, tears that had a tinge of blood in them, had often dimmed her eye, when she remembered that she had lost her womanhood, lost her soul, lost her life, for ever.

Surely, too, the thought of reformation had often visited her. But the "Where shall I go? what shall I do?" as often checked her. "Who in this universe cares for a woman that is a sinner? Shall I ask the Pharisee to help me? He will but gather his garments closer lest I should touch him. My parents? They have shut the door of their homes and their hearts in my face. The God of my people is a God whose holiness burns like fire, and I belong to the darkness and the night. The darkness is my home, and misery is my portion. Shame and everlasting contempt the harvest of my future." Oh! what a heaven-born ray of hope was lit within the darkness of her spirit; what a gleam flashed forth from that jewel, which, though dimmed and flawed, was within her still, when the Man who was fresh from the shrine of immaculate purity, and was bathed in its holy lustre, bent on that woman who was a sinner a glance of ineffable tenderness, and said, "Come unto me, thou weary and heavy laden one, and I will give thee rest." "Woman,

thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace."

2. The Lord had quickened within her numbed and withered heart the pulses of a blessed and purifying love.

Love is the strong redeemer of pollution. How hard and how long will even a human love struggle against the pollution of a sensual life. Even from

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