The infallible critics can prove to a hair that this passage is an
interpolation. An interpolation in that sense means something inserted
to deceive or defraud; a forgery. How can you defraud or deceive anybody
by the interpolation of pure gold with pure gold? How can that be a
forgery which hurts nobody, but gives to everybody more value in the
thing uttered? If John vii., 3-11, is an interpolation let us hope
Heaven has long ago blessed the interpolator. Does anybody--even the
infallible critic--contend that Jesus would not have so said and done
if the woman had been brought to Him? Was that not the very flower and
savor and soul of His teaching? Would He have said or done otherwise? If
the Ten Commandments were lost utterly from among men there would yet
remain these four greater:

"Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you."

"Suffer little children to come unto me."

"Go and sin no more."

"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

My lords and ladies, men and women, the Ten Commandments, by the side of
these sighs of gentleness, are the Police Court and the Criminal Code,
which are intended to pay cruelty off in punishment. These Four are
the tears with which sympathy soothes the wounds of suffering. Blessed
interpolator of St. John!

There are three marvelous novels in the Bible--not Novels in the sense
of fiction, but in the sense of vivid, living narratives of human
emotions and of events. A million Novels rest on those nine verses