Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898).djvu/381



T is related, in the seventh chapter of Luke's Gospel, that Jesus was once the honored guest of a certain

Pharisee, Simon by name, though quite unlike Simon the disciple. While they were at meat, a strange incident occurred, as if to interrupt the scene of Oriental festivity. A “strange woman” came in, having heard of Jesus' presence in Simon's house. Heedless of the fact that she was debarred from such a place and such society, — especially under the stern rules of rabbinical law, as positively as if she were a Hindoo pariah intruding upon the household of a high-caste Brahman, — this woman (Mary Magdalene, as she has since been called) approached Jesus. According to the custom of those days, he did not sit on a chair, as we sit at table, but reclined on a couch, or lounge, with his head towards the festal board, and