ON THE ANOINTING THE FEET OF JESUS:-JOHN XII. 7.

For the Christian Observer.

WE E read, John xii. 7, "Then said Jesus, Let her alone against the day of my burying hath she kept this." The previous verses of this chapter are full of interest. The time of his offering up was now at hand; and the blessed Jesus draws nigh to the predestined place where the last scene of His afflicted life, even the death of the cross, was to be enacted. It is the free movement of His own will which leads this Lamb to the slaughter. He therefore comes into the immediate neighbourhood of Jerusalem. To Bethany in particular He directs His steps, that He might, before He takes His final leave, impart some blessing to that family whom He loved; and enjoy for a few short moments those solaces of friendship, to which the tenderness and gentleness of His heart disposed Him. "Then Jesus six days before the Passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead." He was prompted to this visit, partly by a desire to ascertain whether the extraordinary exercise of His love and power, so lately manifested at that place, had produced its due and legitimate effects. It is thus, that where much is given, much also is required. It is thus that large returns are expected, from those on whom signal mercies have been bestowed, on whom marvellous light has shone. May we present those fruits of gratitude, of holiness, and of love, which in the midst of His sorrows, the blessed Jesus was cheered by finding in the hearts of " Mary, and her sister, and Lazarus."

The circumstances in which our Lord and Lazarus now met, are suited, and no doubt were intended, to familiarize the thoughts of the unseen world. They are calculated to make us feel as though the passage from time to eternity were not that violent and startling thing, which the misgivings of the carnal mind and natural heart would make it. Here we have, as it were, two inmates in the same domestic scene, one on His way to the land of spirits, the other but lately arrived from that region which lies beyond the grave. They meet, just like persons passing and repassing on the common road of life; one arriving from some foreign country, and the other about to take his departure for the same. Nor does the fact that our Lord was so quickly to leave this world, and that Lazarus had so lately risen from the dead, seem to take them (I speak of the mere manhood of our Saviour) out of the CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 108. 4 X

ordinary condition of humanity. There seems to be nothing of ghostly awe about them. All appears as natural and easy as if no "strange thing" had happened, or was about to happen, to the one, or to the other. They look quite like themselves, and in full prossession of themselves. There is, in a word, something in this meeting, which tends to soften the separating line between the two worlds, and to blend time into eternity. It is true that the case of Him who dwelt in the glory of the Father before the world was, stands out in bold relief from every other. Though His atoning agonies were interposed, yet through that cloud He saw His own heaven opening to receive Him. He heard by anticipation the angelic choirs repeating, "Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in." But even as it respects His true disciples, I am convinced that the more they advance in spiritual knowledge, and become the subjects of pure and undefiled religion, the less harsh and violent will be the idea which they form of the transition from time to eternity. The more they will be influentially impressed with the conviction that the same God is present in earth and heaven; that the same uncreated sun shines in both hemispheres. The more they will be practically assured that death can operate no change upon the moral condition of the soul; and consequently that it will translate them to a state not essentially, but only circumstantially, different from the present. A translation, as it affects the soul, into higher measures of the same enjoyments as it possesses now; removing at the same time all obstructions to the fulness of its felicity; all impediments arising from a frail and sinful body, from the miseries of a groaning and travailing creation, from all the sorrows that flesh is heir to, and from all the troubles to which man is born, as the sparks fly upwards. We find Lazarus, just risen from the dead, falling back into the usual habits of life, and anxious to give his Divine and gracious visitor the best reception in his power. "There they made him a supper; and Martha served: but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him."

And here may I be allowed to hazard a conjecture which has been suggested to my own mind? "How is it possible," it is often said, "that one who had seen, as Lazarus did, the light and glories of the celestial world, could enter a second time into this grovelling state of being; and endure with patience a change so unfriendly to his happiness? Would not his senses have been so dazzled by the brightness of the scenes he saw, that he would in this lower world meet with darkness in the day-time, and grope in the noon-day as in the night?" To this I answer, If memory be dependent on impressions made by the sentient principle upon the brain, and if the mind can, in this present state, recur to past events only by tracing them as written and recorded there, it would seem that if the spirit be for a time separated from the body, it can, upon its return to its earthly tenement, find no memorial of its experiences during the interval of its separation. The spirit, being absent, did not act upon the material organ of its manifestations. Nothing with which it was then conversant is registered. And consequently when it is reunited to the body, and brought again within the limits of that condition, in which nothing can be remembered which has not been imprinted upon fleshly tables; it would follow that all those who, like Lazarus, have returned from the invisible world, must be wholly unconscious of what they saw or witnessed there. It might indeed be said that in his peculiar case, to change from heaven to earth was not loss but gain; because it re-admitted him to that presence

which is better than heaven itself. But let us consider that He who sat as a familiar visitant in this humble dwelling, inhabiteth eternity, and fills all worlds; so that to whatever region the soul of Lazarus was wafted, "He was there also." Besides, the days were numbered, and the hours were almost spent, during which the blessed Jesus was to be the visible Guide and Shepherd of His flock. And doubtless this must have cast an air of melancholy over the scene before us, and mingled sorrow with that cup of joy.

In full keeping with their character as elsewhere drawn, Martha took the careful part. She showed her affection, warm and cordial as it was, by an active and ready attention to her Saviour's wants, and anxious provision for His comfort. "Martha served." But she whom St. Luke describes as sitting at Jesus' feet to hear his word, manifests a devotion of the heart which flowed in deeper currents. "Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment." This costly ointment had perhaps been purchased, in anticipation of the sacred use to which Mary now devoted it. Or it might have been, though not a necessary of life, a suitable appendage to that position which she thought it her duty to maintain, (for in the smallest as well as the greatest things, one of a Christian spirit feels accountable to God). Or, if there had still lingered in that meek soul some sparks of the vanity which so easily besets us, and she had in this one instance gone farther in this outlay upon her person than duty prompted; she had lately been witness of a scene which, of all others, withers the roots of vanity in the heart, the death of one she fondly loved. Those tears which she had shed at the grave of Lazarus, had quenched the spark and washed away the stains of pride, and purified her heart from the defilement of that sin. Yes, it is good for the proud to taste the cup of sorrow. That medicine can do more than ten thousand sermons to cure that dangerous disease; to lower the pulse, and cool the fever, and to take away the proud flesh, of carnal nature. And thus it was, that when her brother died, the last finish was given to the crucifixion of Mary's heart. And thus a change took place in the little economy of her attire, (little in the estimate of man, but not of God), and she denied herself the luxury of this ointment as superfluous and vain. And He who knows the secrets of the heart was witness to that victory over self. He resolved that she should be no loser by this sacrifice. He accepted it as an offering to Himself. He put honour on the giver and the gift, and decreed that both the ointment, and she who "poured it on His body," should be had in everlasting remembrance.

Surely, under all the circumstances of the case, a more affecting sight could not have been imagined, nor could a more tender or touching exhibition be presented to the view, than this meek disciple kneeling before her Saviour, and with her hair wiping from His feet that ointment which one less devoted would have poured upon the hair itself.

But scenes of purity and love are not congenial with a heart in which opposing passions dwell. "The carnal mind is enmity against God;" not against an empty name or abstract notion, but against that nature which is the concentration and the source of all that is "true, and venerable, and just, and pure, and lovely, and of good report." It is that light which dispels the darkness which it loves; it is that holiness which shames the impurity to which it cleaves;-these are the things which render God, and all that proceeds from God, and all that tends

to God, so hateful to the slave of sin. They are abhorrent to his tastes, and death to all his joys. They are against the grain and current of that world which he has chosen for his portion. They are against "the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life;"-the sum and substance of all that the carnal mind can dream of, or shape to itself, as a happiness worth possessing. In such a frame of spirit did the traitor contemplate, with evil eye, a scene at which angels might rejoice. "Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, which should betray him, Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor?" (4, 5.)

There is no weapon which the men of the world employ more actively against religion, than contrasting its airy speculations and visionary frames with those practical and efficient duties which promote the temporal good of man, and bear upon the interests of society. And no wonder they should prefer the latter to the former. For God, and all that relates to God, is "far above out of their sight." They are to them precisely what all visible nature is to the blind. Prayer, and the consolations of God's Spirit, and the blessed hope of everlasting life, are to them mere words without a meaning: they go for nothing in their account. And in this false estimate they are confirmed, by living in the midst of those who are as dead to spiritual things as they are themselves. And thus outnumbering those who know God's truth by an overwhelming disproportion, they set them down as men of fanciful and strange opinions. And so it would be with the naturally blind, if instead of being comparatively few, they formed the far greater portion of society. If here and there in a dark world there were a single individual, one among thousands, who asserted of himself that he had a sense to which all else were strangers, the blind would only laugh at his description of light and colours, and all the glories of the landscape. They would resolve his vision into a mere aberration of the brain. And so it is that those who "speak that they do know, and testify that they have seen," are discredited and unheeded. The common sense is against them; they are outnumbered; and when it is put to the vote "whether these things are so," the dissentients have it by an overwhelming majority. Thus it is that duties immediately to God are cried down as either valueless, or, at least, as subordinate to those which bear directly upon mere temporal concerns. And thus it is that the latter are extolled, not because the heart that is insensible to God feels most for man, but because these human virtues are the best standard under which those can rally who would oppose themselves to the supernatural graces of God's Holy Spirit. It is not that the men of the world perform those duties to their neighbour, with which they would shoulder out the duties which they owe to God. No: the practice of these things they leave to persons of another stamp. All they want is a convenient theory; something that may catch the vulgar mind; something whose palpable utility and tangible reality may be plausibly contrasted with the irrelevancy of religion to what in their hearts they believe to be the whole of man, or of man's concerns.

Of this character of mind we have the picture drawn to the life, in Judas. We have in him a thorough specimen of one who "savoured not the things that be of God, but of those that be of men." But amongst the legion which infested the bosom of this unhappy sinner, that covetousness which God abhorreth, stands out in bold relief from all the rest. Of this the Evangelist thus informs us: "This he said,

not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein." If there appear a harshness in this language, not well in keeping with the gentle spirit of the disciple whom Jesus loved; if we catch in these words an asperity which we should not expect to hear from him who leaned on Jesus' breast, and whose peculiar office it seemed to be to teach that God is love-let us remember how calculated the scene before him was to stir up whatever latent spark of hostile passion still might linger in that meek and gentle soul. "Be angry and sin not," is at once the interdict of an unlawful, and the warrant of a lawful, indignation against sin. And assuredly no greater violence could be offered to the feelings of a pious heart, than the hateful exhibition of presumption, hypocrisy, and enmity to God's goodness, which was here presented. Yes: there is an essential warfare between righteousness and unrighteousness. And hence it is that we see the spirit of this meek Apostle stirred within him at the revolting display of such consummate wickedness. And let us remember that a gentler spirit than that of John, that He of whose fulness all the love that flowed from that amiable disciple's heart was but the slender stream; let us remember that His mercy, if too long abused, will slowly and reluctantly be transformed into the sterner attribute of justice. Let us remember that the day is coming, when "the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, will hide themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; and say to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne; and (oh! strange combination!) from the WRATH OF THE LAMB."

Had Judas indeed cared for the poor, he must have known how little he could serve their interests by withholding from the blessed Jesus that homage of the heart, that devotion of all we are and have, which we so entirely and so strictly owe Him. The fact is, that if the love of him reigned in every soul, the poor would cease out of the land. All the natural ills that flesh is heir to, all the groanings and travailings of this afflicted world, are but the physical counterparts of moral evil; the dark shadows and material images of sin. As in the primeval paradise, everything that was grateful to the senses and pleasant to the sight, was but the draught or copy of the far happier paradise of the human breast; so all the troubles to which our fallen race are born, all the miseries of this vale of tears, are but the response of outward nature to the hidden diseases and tumultuous passions which prey upon the very vitals of the soul of man. Let all then be brought like Mary to sit at the feet of Jesus. Let the love of God, like a refiner's fire, purify every soul. Let sin, the cause, be removed, and suffering, the consequence, would have no more place amongst us. Sorrow and sighing would flee away, the poor would have enough and to spare. garners would be full and plenteous with all manner of store: our sheep would bring forth thousands and ten thousands in our streets. oxen would be strong to labour, there would be no decay: no leading into captivity, and no complaining in our streets."

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From the awful exhibition of a soul estranged from God, from the traitor Judas, we turn with an admiration only heightened by the contrast, to the loyalty of a faithful heart, so beautifully displayed in Mary. "Then said Jesus, Let her alone: against the day of my burying she hath kept this:" or as St. Mark expresses it, "She is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying." It would appear that Mary, meek