John 12:7

A GOOD WORK

‘Then said Jesus, Let her alone: against the day of My burying hath she kept this.’

John 12:7

Note the time: it enhanced the gift. It was the insight of love. The Saviour was but a few hours from Calvary. Death was near.

I. ‘She did it for My Burial.’—Mary saw something was troubling Him. She had seen His Face in all its moods, and she noticed it was saddened now. The Cross was casting its shadow before. Some thought it waste. Christ called it a good, that is, a beautiful, work. It was beautiful with faith and love and sacrifice. To His sensitive Nature it was most touching. He was to be forsaken, hated, betrayed, but here at least was one heart beating true.

II. Pour your affection on those you love during their life: do not wait to lavish it on the dead. Mary did not wait to show her love: Nicodemus did.

III. Mary wanted no reward.—Love never wants to be paid. ‘So you want a bonus,’ said Hegel to Heine, when the latter spoke of the reward which awaits virtue after death; ‘you want a bonus for having taken care of your sick mother?’ Love never wants any bonus. But when we are dead we do wish some one to speak kindly of us. Every human heart desires this. So Christ promised that wherever His Gospel was preached, along with the Story of Bethlehem and Calvary and Olivet the story of the alabaster box should be told too; that this deed should go down to unborn ages and be the theme of praise to countless tongues. As St. Chrysostom said in his great Church of St. Sophia, at Constantinople, over 1400 years ago: ‘While the victories of many kings and generals are lost in silence, and many, who have founded states and reduced nations to subjection, are not known by reputation or by name, the pouring of ointment by this woman is celebrated throughout the world.’

—Rev. F. Harper.

Illustrations

(1) ‘There are so many like the ex-artillery man in Bleak House, who confides to his comrade George what a treasure he has in his wife, but “I never tell her so. I always take her advice—but I never tell her so. I never knew her equal—but I never tell her so.” There are many Mr. Bagnets who keep the alabaster box sealed up till the day of death.’

(2) ‘In 1858 a funeral reached the old Greyfriars’ graveyard in Edinburgh. Among others it was attended by the dead man’s faithful dog. After the funeral the other mourners returned home, the dog alone remained. So inconsolable was the loving creature that for fourteen years, till his death in 1872, he refused to leave the neighbourhood of his master’s grave. All the city heard of the dog’s love, and little children were brought to see a dog whose love was stronger than death, and men and women blushed when they looked at that graveyard dog. There he lay—on the grave—making little boys and girls more tender, and wringing tears from men. Baroness Burdett-Coutts heard of the Greyfriars’ dog, and erected near the entrance of the churchyard a fountain of marble, with a dog in bronze surmounting it, and this inscription: “A tribute to the affectionate fidelity of Greyfriars’ ‘Bobby.’ In 1858, this faithful dog followed the remains of his master to Greyfriars’ churchyard, and lingered near the spot until his death in 1872.” ’