"WISDOM IS JUSTIFIED OF HER CHILDREN"
"Wisdom is justified of her children." Jesus had been questioning his hearers about John the Baptist. "For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath a devil. The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But, "Wisdom is justified of her children."
This shows that the world ever finds some flaw in human character. If a man fasts he is possessed of peculiar ideas and if he feasts he is a materialist and a glutton. But Jesus would have us understand that virtue consists neither in eating nor drinking nor yet in abstaining from eating and drinking. "Wisdom is justified of her children." A man may desire to fast and be wise, or he may desire to feast and still be wise. Virtue is independent of any material form which it may take. The children of wisdom look to the inner and not to the outer for justification. Wisdom knows neither publican nor sinner but is conscious only of herself though she may dress in many garments.
If one believes that virtue consists in fasting, then virtue appears to him through fasting; but to him who
(page 72) finds no virtue in fasting, appear to be a
greater virtue. We are over-concerned with non-essentials, straining at gnats while swallowing mountains of superstition.

72, 73