and bad. Lazarus coming back from the dead to compel the trembling belief of the five banqueters is just as futile, from the moral point of view, as a police raid which should confiscate the purple and fine linen, and compel the diners to close the banquet hall. "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead."

For a life which neglects the opportunity that lies day by day at the very door, there can never be the excuse that you had not sufficient warning, or divine assurance of the outcome. You have more than Moses and the prophets you have the life and example and power of Jesus Christ, and the means of grace which He ordained; you have the daily testimony of conscience illuminated by the gift of the Holy Ghost. You have the same spiritual opportunities which have enabled men for nineteen centuries to testify by their lives to the supreme power of Jesus Christ, the same opportunities to which the best men you know today, if you could learn their story, owe whatever power they have to resist the temptations that beset them, and to live in some degree as God meant them to live.

The things that we are sure of are sufficient to live by, even if they seem to lead us out into the dark. Dwell not so much on the things that you doubt. Be not faint hearted because the things which revelation has not revealed baffle all speculation. Begin with what you do believe, and make that count. Live up to that light. Faith, like a grain of mustard seed, may be small in the beginning. But it grows, if you are faithful to that little. It thrusts its roots deep into the earth, and lifts its branches higher and higher toward heaven, until it becomes the mightiest of all living, growing things.

VI.

GLORIFIED REMINISCENCE.

When Jesus understood it, he said unto them, Why trouble ye the woman?

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For in that she hath poured this ointment on my body, she did it for my burial. Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this, that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial of her.S. MATTHEW xxvi, 10, 12, 13.

THERE never was a prophecy more strange than this. When our Lord predicts the destruction of Jerusalem, when His mind leaps across long ages of time to anticipate the Day of Judgment, He deals with big events and vast movements that come of necessity, as it seems to us, within the range of vision of the Son of God. We so revere the lofty Person of Christ that when, even at the foot of the Cross, His flashing eyes command a view of all after history, the rising and falling of nations and kingdoms, pestilence, war, earthquake, the final trumpet, and the rushing of ten thousand times ten thousand angels, we are not too greatly amazed.

But here He seems to labor in prophetic

utterance concerning a mere trifle. He would seem to desire permanence for an evanescent perfume that floated through a banquet hall nearly two thousand years ago.

For, as He sits at the feast given in His honor at Bethany, a woman enters, having an alabaster cruse of precious ointment, and reverently anoints the head and feet of Jesus. The stingy ill-nature of Judas Iscariot stirs in some of the disciples, unused to such luxuries, a feeling of protest. Why waste this precious liquid in the gratification of a mere sentiment? If one would do good, why not something useful? Why not something permanent?

Even as they grumble, S. John tells us, the house is filled with the odour of the ointment. The guests are conscious of a subtle and delicious fragrance that steals upon the senses, and adds a languorous delight to the breath of life, compelling attention and awakening memories like a strain of ethereal music. But, just when it most delights the nostrils, the odour begins to vanish. It belongs only to the moment, and is the very symbol of all that is transitory, as opposed to that which is permanent.

Then it is that Jesus makes His strangest

prophecy. "No," He seems to say, "This is not transitory. The perfume of this hour is, in fact, its only permanent possession. This anointing with the alabaster cruse of ointment is a deed that shall live in history." "Verily I say unto you," declares the Christ, "wheresoever this Gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this, that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial of her."

If the prophecy is strange, its fulfillment is even more amazing, in literal fidelity to the promise. Wheresoever the Gospel is preached, the fragrance of this woman's deed in Bethany abides. Nearly two thousand years have wrought their changes in the world, but here today once more the strange prophecy is fulfilled, and the story is told again. And wherever the Gospel is preached of the wonderful things that Jesus did for humanity, there goes the record of this one loving service that humanity performed for Jesus.

The anointing of our Blessed Lord at Bethany, when one tries to measure its significance, is found to be bound up with one of the most difficult but most fascinating