THE BEST IS NOT TOO GOOD
‘To what purpose is this waste?’
I. The origin of the question.—How do these words emerge again and again from the deep of men’s hearts and find utterance more or less distinct from their lips! Sometimes they are words of disciples spoken in simplicity and good faith. Sometimes they spring out of a far more bitter root.
II. The odour of the ointment.—How much time, for instance, the Christian man must seem to the votary of this world to be throwing away in meditation and prayer. The world grudges and resents any signal outbursts of feeling and passion, any manifest warmth and heat of the affections, in any of the services offered to God. To be drunk with wine it can understand and pardon, but not to be ‘filled with the Spirit.’ And not otherwise is it when the inner devotion of heart finds utterance in some costly offering of the hands. While the Church is filled with the odour of the ointment, there will not be wanting some to exclaim, “To what purpose is this waste?”
III. The best demanded.—But see how our Lord silenced the murmurers, allowed and accepted the gift. ‘She hath wrought a good work upon Me.’ No cold utilitarianism is to reign in Christ’s Church—no niggard calculation of the cheapest rate at which He may be served. The best which any man can bring to Him is not too good, the richest and the rarest is not too rich and rare for Him.
—Archbishop Trench.
Illustration
‘A Christian gentleman, when blamed by his partner for doing so much for the cause of God, replied, “Your foxhounds cost more in one year, than my religion ever cost in two.” ’