I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance._" Repentance was a rite for Laodice, a payment of offering, a process to the righteously inclined, a thing that could in no wise purify the sinner as to make him worthy of association with the upright.

The old Christian's use of the word was different; he had said that the Messiah came to the sinner, and not to the righteous.

Had the young Jewess been less in need of comfort in her own consciousness of spiritual delinquency she would have set down the old teacher as one of the idlest dealers in contradiction.

But now she listened with keener zest; perchance in this doctrine there was balm for her hurt.
She made some answer which showed the awakening of this new interest and then with infinite poetry and earnestness he began to unfold the teachings of Christ.
A woman came to them with wine and food, for the midday had come, but neither noticed it.

In his fervor to enlighten this tender soul, the old man forgot his weariness; in her wonder at the strangely gentle doctrine which had contradicted all the world's previous usage, the girl forgot her prejudice.