October 21

“She stood at His feet behind Him weeping.”—Luke 7:38.

THE truest purity is not afraid to come into contact with the sinner. The Saviour and the woman of the city are separated by no impassable gulf; though she is sunk in evil, and He, as one has greeted Him, is “Jesus, good Paragon, thou crystal Christ.” He may draw near her, and He will catch no infection, breathe no poisonous air, sustain no slightest injury. Lord, make me so white and clean that I shall be able to move among the unholy, and yet my imagination and heart and life remain untarnished. Clothe me in the armour of a Christlike saintliness, that I may walk safely in the enemy’s territory and the plague-stricken land.

And the sinner is not afraid to come into contact with the truest purity. The erring woman shrank from Simon the Pharisee, but not from Jesus the Son of God; the one was a martinet and precisian, the Other was a Redeemer and Friend. Lord, help me to add to my righteousness love and longing; give me the ruddy glow of the ruby as well as the clear brightness of the diamond; find for me a place among the seraphim who burn, even more than among the cherubim who know. It will be a sad and condemning sign of my Christianity if it drives the transgressor away instead of alluring him to my feet, and, through me, to diviner Feet than mine—the blessed pierced Feet of the Saviour of the lost.

I would be a saint, and yet a saint round whom the wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked will gather.

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