Also Scaurus himself said, “It is very likely that many of the poorer Jews were called ‘sinners’ by the Pharisees for breaking small and perhaps disputed rules about purification or about the exact observance of the sabbath. This my rabbi admitted, although he did not care to say much about it. I can understand that Christ might deal epigrammatically (so to speak) with poor creatures of this kind by pronouncing them ‘forgiven’ or ‘righteous.’ But they would be just as ‘righteous’ as before; neither more righteous nor less righteous; his ‘pronouncing’ would make no difference. The Jews closely connect ‘pronouncing righteous’ and ‘making righteous,’ as though the sentence of the judge is anything more than the expression of the judge’s opinion! But it is a pure delusion.” I did not think Scaurus was right. It did not seem to me that the voice of the true Son of man, saying, “I pronounce you righteous in the name of the Father of men,” would be of the same kind or efficacy as the voice of a lawyer, saying, “Having in view sect. 3 of chap. 4 of such and such a Code, I pronounce you not guilty.” I had come to feel that the Son of man represented the “authority” of humanity—divine humanity, such humanity as commends itself (without support from statute law) to the consciences of mankind. The Pharisees (I thought) might have _made_ some of these poor men really _unrighteous_ by making them frightened of God—as though He were an austere lawgiver or hard taskmaster. The Son, delivering them from this servile terror, and raising them into a wholesome fear, that is to say, into a free and loving reverence for a righteous God, might bring the Spirit of the Father into their hearts, thus _making_ them _righteous_. If so, Christ’s voice, saying “I forgive you,” would not be a mere judge’s “sentence,” or expression of “opinion.” It would be a power, causing the guilty to feel, and to be, forgiven.