Love Wooing Yet More.

Now a look at the power at work in the realm of the human will, really a higher power, or power at work in a higher realm, though not commonly so recognized by the crowd.  There are eight incidents here.  And again we shall find the steady rise of the power seen at work.  Three of these tell of the human will changed, and four of its being restrained against its will from doing that which it was dead-set on doing.

The ruler who withdrew from the midst of the disturbed temple managers for a night-call upon Jesus was radically changed in his convictions and his life-purpose.  He had an open mind.  The work was begun at that first Jerusalem Passover.  Under the holy spell of John’s presence he is drawn away from his enraged brother-rulers to seek the night talk.  The frankness and fullness of Jesus’ talk shows plainly how open he was and how much more he opened and yielded that evening.  And the after protest in the official meeting of the rulers, and the loving care for the body of Jesus reveal how radical was the transformation wrought upon his will and heart by Jesus.[93]

The Samaritan woman is changed from utter indifference to a change of will and purpose that makes her an eager messenger to her people until they hail Jesus as the Saviour of the world.  The change involved a radical face-about in habit and life amongst the very people who knew her past sinful life best.  It meant more than change of conviction, that change actually put into practice across the grain of the habits of years, and of the lower passions, so hard to change.  It is a distinct step up from the change in Nicodemus simply because there was so much more to change.  The same power had more to do.  And it did it.[94]

The story of the woman accused of the gravest offense is a double one in the power seen at work.  She would naturally be hardened, and stony hard, shameless to the point of hopeless indifference in moral sense, and all this increased by their coarse publicity of her.  And so little is said, but so much suggested of a change in her.

The purity of Jesus’ face and presence would be a tremendous power of conviction.  The gentleness of His quiet question would couple softening of heart with conviction of her sin.  The word of counsel as she is dismissed would seem a mirror reflecting the inner longing of her heart and the new purpose stirring within, as memory recalls early days of virgin purity, and a wild hope within struggles towards life that there may yet be a change even for her.

The change in her accusers is, at least, as remarkable though wholly different.  Morally hardened, as shameless and coarse as the woman as regards a fine moral sensibility; by their own tacit confession no better in practice than she in the point of morals raised; in their malignant cunning only concerned with the woman’s sin as a means of venting their spleen upon the man they hated and feared,—­what a hideous spirit-photograph!