Luke's romantic shrinking from unpleasantness, and his sentimentality,
are illustrated by his version of the woman with the ointment. Matthew
and Mark describe it as taking place in the house of Simon the Leper,
where it is objected to as a waste of money. In Luke's version the leper
becomes a rich Pharisee; the woman becomes a Dame aux Camellias; and
nothing is said about money and the poor. The woman washes the feet of
Jesus with her tears and dries them with her hair; and he is reproached
for suffering a sinful woman to touch him. It is almost an adaptation
of the unromantic Matthew to the Parisian stage. There is a distinct
attempt to increase the feminine interest all through. The slight lead
given by Mark is taken up and developed. More is said about Jesus's
mother and her feelings. Christ's following of women, just mentioned by
Mark to account for their presence at his tomb, is introduced earlier;
and some of the women are named; so that we are introduced to Joanna the
wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, and Susanna. There is the quaint little
domestic episode between Mary and Martha. There is the parable of the
Prodigal Son, appealing to the indulgence romance has always shown to
Charles Surface and Des Grieux. Women follow Jesus to the cross; and he
makes them a speech beginning "Daughters of Jerusalem." Slight as these
changes may seem, they make a great change in the atmosphere. The Christ
of Matthew could never have become what is vulgarly called a woman's
hero (though the truth is that the popular demand for sentiment, as far
as it is not simply human, is more manly than womanly); but the Christ
of Luke has made possible those pictures which now hang in many ladies'
chambers, in which Jesus is represented exactly as he is represented
in the Lourdes cinematograph, by a handsome actor. The only touch of
realism which Luke does not instinctively suppress for the sake of
producing this kind of amenity is the reproach addressed to Jesus for
sitting down to table without washing his hands; and that is retained
because an interesting discourse hangs on it.