woman to our Lord had gone out from His presence , " con victed by their own conscience," He dismissed the guilty sinner with the solemn words, " Neither do I condemn thee : go and sin no more." — That she did not deserve pun- ishment He did not say. But He had not come to be a judge. Moreover, in the absence of all witnesses or accus- ers, there was no case before Him. . Let her then depart as one whose guilt was " not proven," even though she was really guilty, and let her " sin no more."
To say in the face of these simple facts that our Lord made light of the sin of adultery is not fair. There is nothing in the passage before us to prove it. Of all whose words are recorded in the Bible there is none who has spoken so strongly about the breach of the seventh com- mandment as our divine Master. It is He who has taught that it may be broken by a look or a thought, as well as by an open act. (Matt. v. 28.) It is He who has spoken more strongly than any about the sanctity of the marriage relation. (Matt. xix. 5.) In all that is recorded here, we see nothing inconsistent with the rest of His teaching. He simply refused to usurp the office of the judge and to pro- nounce condemnation on a guilty woman, for the gratifica- tion of His deadly enemies.
In leaving this passage, we must not forget that it con- tains two lessons of great importance. Whatever difficul- ties the verses before us may present, these two lessons at any rate are clear, plain, and unmistakable.
We learn, for one thing, the power of conscience. We read of the woman's accusers, that when they heard our Lord's appeal, " being convicted by their own conscience, they went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last." Wicked* and hardened as they were, they felt something within which made them cowards. Fallen as human nature is, God has taken care to leave within every man a witness that will be heard.