Then follows the story of the woman taken in adultery. That story has approved itself to the conscience of Christendom. I feel it to be most dear and venerable. Some of the Fathers disliked the moral of it, and therefore were glad to believe it not genuine. I wish I were as sure that their conclusion was wrong, as that their reason for wishing the story away was unsound. But impartial critics seem to be agreed that there is not sufficient justification for retaining it, at least in this place. I dare not dispute their authority on a question respecting the weight and value of MSS. I dare not allow affection for the passage to interfere when truth is at stake. Thoughtful students maintain that the story belongs to this Gospel, though they cannot tell to what part of the book it should be transferred. Were it a question of internal evidence simply, I should say that it does not seem to me an interpolated fragment _here_; that it supplies a link between thoughts which otherwise it is less easy to connect. If the story is withdrawn, the 8th chapter opens with the words,--'_Then spake Jesus again, I am the Light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness_.' Perhaps I may be deceived by habit and old association; but I feel as if these words explained how it was that, when Christ said, '_Let him that is without sin cast the first stone_,' the '_accusers went out one by one_.' I see in them also an answer to the charge that He was tolerating sin when He said, '_Go, and sin no more_.' They show that the sharpest judgment upon sin is exercised by Him who delivers from it. And the story appears to unite that exposure of the law-worshippers--who punished breakers of the law, but did not keep the law--which we found in the last chapter, with the revelation of a Will, working in us that we may keep the law in the fullest sense of it, which we shall find in this. Nevertheless, I am afraid of using these pleas. If the story is genuine, it will defend itself; if not, the divine Oracles can do without it. The more sacred we consider them, the more we must be sure that God would have us receive them in purity, and that He will take better care of them than we can.