The Sabbath School. ## LESSON FOR PACIFIC COAST.—DEC. 3. John 7:32-53; 8:1-11. ## LESSON COMMENTS.
“The temple police sent to arrest Jesus had remained near, to watch their opportunity. But the power and majesty of his discourse, which had spell-bound so many others, had overawed and impressed even them, so that they dared not touch him, and went back to their masters empty-handed. To the angry demand for an explanation, they could only answer, ‘Never man spake as this man speaks.’ The Pharisees in the council—the special guardians of the public orthodoxy—professed themselves shocked at such disloyalty on the part of men intrusted with the commission of the high ecclesiastical court. ‘How can you be so led away? Do you not see that only some of the ignorant rabble believe in him? Have any men of position—any members of the council, or any Rabbis—done so? They are qualified to judge on such matters; but as for the rabble, who have accepted such a transgressor as the Messiah, it shows that they do not know the law, and are therefore accursed of God.’ “One faint voice only was heard in the council in hesitating defense of Jesus. It was that of Nicodemus—his visitor by night on his first appearance. ‘I know, sirs, you are zealous for the law, and rightly condemn those who are ignorant of it. But does the law sanction our thus condemning a man before it has heard him, and found exactly what he has done?’ ‘Are you, also, like Jesus, out of Galilee,’ they asked, ‘that you believe in him; only ignorant Galilæans do so? Search the Scriptures, and you will see that no Galilæan was ever inspired as a prophet by God: the race is despised of the Highest, and is it likely it should give Jerusalem the Messiah?’ “In their blind rage they forgot that, at least, Jonah, and Hosea, and Nahum, were Galilæans, and they ignored the fact that if the followers of Jesus were mostly from the illiterate north, he had also not a few even from the sons of bigoted Jerusalem.”—Geikie. “While Jesus was engaged in teaching, the Scribes and Pharisees brought to him a woman whom they accused of the sin of adultery, and said to him, Master ‘now Moses in the law commanded us that such should be stoned; but what sayest thou? This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.’ “The Scribes and Pharisees had agreed to bring this case before Jesus, thinking that whatever decision he made in regard to it, they would therein find occasion to accuse and condemn him. If he should acquit the woman, they would accuse him of despising the law of Moses, and condemn him on that account; and if he should declare that she was guilty of death, they would accuse him to the Romans as one who was stirring up sedition and assuming authority which alone belonged to them. But Jesus well knew for what purpose this case had been brought to him; he read the secrets of their hearts, and knew the character and life history of every man in his presence. He seemed indifferent to the question of the Pharisees, and while they were talking and pressing about him, he stooped and wrote carelessly with his finger in the sand. “Although doing this without apparent design, Jesus was tracing on the ground, in legible characters, the particular sins of which the woman’s accusers were guilty, beginning with the eldest and ending with the youngest. At length the Pharisees became impatient at the indifference of Jesus, and his delay in deciding the question before him, and drew nearer, urging the matter. But as their eyes fell upon the words written in the sand, fear and surprise took possession of them. The people, looking on, saw their countenances suddenly change, and pressed forward to discover what they were regarding with such an expression of astonishment and shame. Many of those who thus gathered round also read the record of the hidden sin inscribed against these accusers of another. “Then Jesus ‘lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.’ The accusers saw that Jesus not only knew the secrets of their past sins, but was acquainted with their purpose in bringing this case before him, and had in his matchless wisdom defeated their deeply laid scheme. They now became fearful lest Jesus would expose their guilt to all present, and they therefore ‘being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last; and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.’ “‘There was not one of her accusers but was more guilty than the conscience-stricken woman who stood trembling with shame before him. After the Pharisees had hastily left the presence of Christ, in their guilty consternation, he arose and looked upon the woman, saying, ‘Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee. Go, and sin no more.’ “Jesus did not palliate sin nor lessen the sense of crime; but he came not to condemn; he came to lead the sinner to eternal life. The world looked upon this erring woman as one to be slighted and scorned; but the pure and holy Jesus stooped to address her with words of comfort, encouraging her to reform her life. Instead of to condemn the guilty, his work was to reach into the very depths of human woe and degradation, lift up the debased and sinful, and bid the trembling penitent to sin no more. When the woman stood before Jesus, cowering under the accusation of the Pharisees, and a sense of the enormity of her crime, she knew that her life was trembling in the balance, and that a word from Jesus would add fuel to the indignation of the crowd, so that they would immediately stone her to death. “Her eyes droop before the calm and searching glance of Christ. Stricken with shame, she is unable to look upon that holy countenance. As she thus stands waiting for sentence to be passed upon her, the words fall upon her astonished ears that not only deliver her from her accusers, but send them away convicted of greater crimes than hers. After they are gone she hears the mournfully solemn words: ‘Neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more.’ Her heart melts with penitential grief; and with gratitude to her Deliverer, she bows at the feet of Jesus, sobbing out in broken accents the emotions of her heart, and confessing her sins with bitter tears.—Mrs. E. G. White in “Great Controversy.” The first eleven verses of the seventh chapter of John are thought by many to be spurious, because they are not found in quite a number of ancient manuscripts. Dr. Clarke, in his comments on the eleventh verse gives a probable reason why they were omitted. “‘Neither do I condemn thee.’ Bishop Pearce says, ‘It would have been strange if Jesus, when he was not a magistrate, and had not the witnesses before him to examine them; and when she had not been tried and condemned by the law and legal judges, should have taken upon him to condemn her. This being the case, it appears why Jesus avoided giving an answer to the question of the Scribes and Pharisees; and also how little reason there is to conclude from hence, that Christ seems in this case not enough to have discouraged adultery, though he called it a sin. And yet this opinion took place so early among the Christians, that the reading of this story was industriously avoided in the lessons recited out of the Gospels, in the public service of the churches; as if Jesus’ saying, I do not condemn thee, had given too much countenance to women guilty of that crime. In consequence of this, as it was never read in the churches, and is now not to be found in any of the Evangelistaria, and as it was probably marked in the MSS. as a portion not to be read there, this whole story, from verse 1 to verse 11, inclusive, came in length of time to be left out in some MSS., though in the greater part it is still remaining.’”