Wasted Aroma

“Why was this waste?” — Mark xiv,, 14.

LAST Sabbath night in Plymouth Church we saw a woman with a box of costly perfume pressing into the banqueting-hall where sat Christ the physician, and Simon the convalescent. The box in which she carried the perfume had been made in the city of Alabastron, from stone dug up from a hill near that city, and hence, you see, was very appropriately called an alabaster-box. According to an olden custom, she shook the box and poured the odor out on the head of the Jesus whom she very dearly loved. The guests were seized with a sudden fit of prudence, and pronounced the whole thing as uneconomical, crying out in the words of the text, “Why was this waste?” But Jesus applauded her, and said, “She hath done what she could,” and proclaimed the fact that her behavior should be approvingly known through all the earth and through all the ages.

Now, before I come, this morning, to the main thought of my subject, I want you to see what a beautiful thing it is for a woman to approach Christ. This woman of Bethany might have done a great many pleasant things before; but this was the grandest, bravest, sweetest thing she ever did, and it is told as a memorial of her.

Woman’s life is dull and monotonous in this country without Jesus. Men may go out into the world, as they do every day, and they see new sights and hear new sounds; but woman, for the most part, suffers and toils indoors. She needs a rest and inspiration she can not get from music and needle-work. She has affections deep and priceless, and will never be happy until she pours that alabaster - box on the head of Christ. She may try to satisfy her soul by drawing-room flatteries and elegancies of apparel, but will often feel great disquietude. She can not have peace here and a state of well-being hereafter, unless, like the woman of the text, she bursts into the room where Jesus sits, with all worshipful affection. Oh! that Mary would, this morning, sit down at the feet of Jesus, and Martha, and Kachel, and Kebecca, and the Israelitish waiting-maid, and grandmother Louise.

I see also that Christ asks no impossibilities. That woman brought an alabaster-box. What was it to Jesus? Why, he owns all the fragrance of earth and heaven; but he took it. He was satisfied with it. If it had been a wooden box, he would have been just as well satisfied, had it been the best one she could bring. I hear some one say, “If I only had this, that, or the other thing, I would do so much for God.” In the last day it may be found that a cup of cold water given in the name of a disciple gets as rich a reward as the founding of a kingdom, and that the sewing-girl’s needle may be as honorable in God’s sight as a king’s sceptre, and that the grandest eulogium that was ever uttered about any one was, “She hath done what she could.”

There she sits at the head of the Sabbath -school class, and she says, “I wish I understood the Scriptures in Greek and Hebrew. I wish I had more faculty for instruction. I wish I could get the attention of my class.

I wish I could bring them all to Christ.” Do not worry. Christ does not want you to know the Scriptures in Greek and Hebrew. Do as well as you can, and from the throne the proclamation will flame forth, “Crown that princess; she hath done what she could.”

There is a man toiling for Christ. He does not get on much. He is discouraged when he hears Paul thunder, and Edward Payson pray. He says, “I wonder if I will ever join the song of heaven.” He wonders if it would not look odd for him to stand amidst the apostles who preached, and the martyrs who flamed. Greater will be his wonder on the day when he shall find out that many who were first in the Church on earth are last in the Church of heaven, and when he sees the procession winding up among the thrones of the sorrowing ones, who never again shall weep, and the weary ones, who never again shall get tired, and the poor, who never again shall beg, and Christ, regardless of all antecedents, will put upon the head of his disciples a crown made from the gold of the eternal hills, set in with pearl from the celestial sea, inscribed with the words, “He hath done what he could.”

But I also see in this subject what wrong notions the world has of economy. Just as soon as these people saw the ointment spilling on the head of Christ, they said, “Why this waste? Why, that ointment might have been sold and given to the poor!” The hypocrites! what did they care about the poor? I do not believe that one of them that made the complaint ever gave a farthing to the poor. I think Judas was most indignant, and he sold his Master for thirty pieces of silver. There is nothing that makes a stingy man so cross as to see generosity in others. If this woman of the text had brought in an old, worn-out box, with some stale perfume, and given that to Christ, they could have endured it; but to have her bring in a vessel on which had been expended the adroitness of skilled artisans, and containing perfume that had usually been reserved for palatial and queenly use, they could not stand it. And so it is often the case in communities and in churches, that those are the most unpopular men who give the most. Judas can not bear to see the alabaster-box broken at the feet of Christ.

Here is a man who gives a thousand dollars to the missionary cause. Men cry out, “What a waste! What’s the use of sending- New Testaments and missionaries, and spending your money in that way? Why don’t you send plows, and corn-threshers, and locomotives, and telegraphs?” But is it a waste? Ask the nations that have been saved: Have not religious blessings always preceded financial blessings? Show me a community where the Gospel of Christ triumphs, and I will show you a community prospered in a worldly sense. Is it a waste to comfort the distressed, to instruct the ignorant, to balk immorality, to capture for God the innumerable hosts of men who erst with quick feet were tramping the way to hell? If a man buy railroad stock, it may decline; if a man invest in a bank, the cashier may abscond; if a man go into partnership, his associate may sink the store. Alas! for the man who has nothing better than “greenbacks” and Government securities! God ever and anon blows up the money-safe, and, with a hurricane of marine disaster, dismantles the merchantmen, and from the blackened heavens he hurls into the exchanore the hissinsr thunder-bolts of his wrath.

People cry up t“his investment and cry down the other; but I tell you there is no safe investment save that which is made in the bank of which God holds the keys. The interest in that is always being paid, and there are eternal dividends. God will change that gold into crowns that shall never lose their lustre, and into sceptres that shall forever wave over a land where the poorest inhabitant is richer than all the wealth of earth tossed up into one glittering coin! So if I stand this morning before men who are now of small means, but who once were greatly prospered, and who in the days of their prosperity were benevolent, let me ask you to sit down and count up your investments. All the loaves of bread you ever gave to the hungry — they are yours yet; all the shoes you ever gave to the barefooted — they are yours yet; all the dollars you ever gave to churches, and schools, and colleges — they are yours yet. Bank -clerks sometimes make mistakes about deposits; but God keeps an unfailing record of all Christian deposits; and though on the great judgment there may be a “run” upon that bank, ten thousand times ten thousand men will get back all they ever gave to Christ — get all back, heaped up, pressed down, shaken together, and running over.

A young Christian woman starts to instruct the freedmen at the South, with a spelling-book in one hand and a Bible in the other. She goes aboard a steamer for Savannah. Through days, and months, and years she toils among the freedmen of the South, and one day there comes up a poisonous breath from the swamp, and a fever smites her low, and far away from home, watched tearfully by those whom she has come to save, she drops to an early grave. “Ob, what a waste! waste of beauty, waste of talent, waste of affection, waste of every thing,” cries the world. “Why, she might have been the joy of her father’s house; she might have been the pride of the drawing-room.” But in the day when rewards are given for earnest Christian work, her inheritance will make insignificant all the treasures of Croesus. Not wasted, her gentle words; not wasted, her homesickness; not wasted, her heart-aches; not wasted, her tears of loneliness; not wasted, the pangs of her last hour; not wasted, the sweat on her dying pillow. The freedmen thought it was the breath of the magnolia in the thicket; the planter thought it was the sweetness of acacia coming up from the hedge. ISTo, no; it was the fragrance of an alabaster-box poured on the head of Christ.

Our world will after a while burn up. So great have been its abominations and disorders, that one would think that when the flames touch it a horrible stench would roll into the skies: the coal-mines consuming, the impurities of great cities burning, you might think that a lost spirit from the pit would stagger back at the sickening odor. But no. I suppose on that day a cloud of incense will roll into the skies, all the wilderness of tropical flowers on fire, the mountains of frankincense, the white sheet of the water-lilies, the million tufts of heliotrope, the trellises of honeysuckle, the walls of “morning-glory.” The earth shall be a burning censer held up before the throne of God, with all the sweet odors of the hemispheres. But on that day a sweeter gale shall waft into the skies. It will come up from ages past, from altars of devotion, and hovels of poverty, and beds of pain, and stakes of martyrdom, and from all the places where good men and women have suffered for God and died for the truth. It will be the fragrance of ten thousand boxes of alabaster, which, through the long reach of the ages, were poured on the head of Christ.

Last Sabbath morning, I think a great many persons, standing in the presence of our burning Tabernacle on Schermerhorn Street, said, “What a waste! Here all the toil expended gone in an hour.” Indeed, those who have built churches know that there are a great many toils and anxieties and sacrifices connected with such an enterprise; the solicitation and collection of funds; the selection of a site for building; the choice of architects and plans and materials; the discussion of acoustics; the watching of building committees, themselves severely watched; the fatigue by day and the sleeplessness by night. It is a fact that, in many cases, after the church has been built, the congregation is exhausted, and the minister is kicked out. Oh, you people of the Brooklyn Tabernacle, what have you to show for all the toil, and prayer, and expenditure of the last two years? A heap of ashes, twisted walls, scorched pillars — an utter obliteration of all you have done. “Why was this waste?” Ah, my dear friends, there was not any waste. All the toil and money you put in that enterprise had a heavenly insurance, and it will be paid back to you in some shape. You may depend upon that. What money I gave toward it, I would rather have where it is — this morning — than have it in my pocket; having it in my pocket, I might lose it; but where it is, it is safe forever. I do not begrudge a nail, or a bolt, or a screw that went down in that great conflagration. Why, if it cost us nothing, do you think Christ would have wanted it?

Do not fling any of your useless, worn-out boxes at him I That was the great precious alabaster-box that the congregation poured on the head of Christ. When I say it was precious, I only say what is true. Our hearts had twined around that place very much. I can hear the old organ going yet, marshaling the hosts of God for the battle-shout of Christian song. I can see the audience rising yet to the “Old Hundred” doxology. I can see the pillars entwined with Christmas garlands, telling the people that Jesus is born, and every man has a chance for heaven. Oh! the place was all crowded with memories; days when Jesus rode through with dyed garments from Bozrah, smiting down our sins, and discomfiting our sorrows. On the last Sabbath-night I preached in that place, inviting men to the hope and joy of the Gospel, if I had known it was the last time, I would have kissed the old place good-bye. It seemed to me that when the roof went in, and we felt that all was gone, that the tears on the cheeks stopped and the sighs ceased, and as if there went through the street on that cold morning one great groan. But do not mourn the loss of that; Jesus is worthy of the most precious gift. “Was it a waste? Are all the joys we felt there a waste? Are all the comforts that brooded over our souls in days of darkness, when trouble came to our souls and to our families, a waste? Were the hundreds and hundreds of souls who, in that building first found the peace of the Gospel, a waste? ISTo, no, no; the building did its work, and it is gone! Let not the woman of Bethany begrudge the box, or begrudge the perfume. Let her rather go and get a better box, and put in it a sweeter odor, and come with another offering.

WASTED AHOJfA. 117

I have been bothered all the morning with a snatch of an old hymn which I can not quite catch. I wish some of you would hunt it up and tell it to me. I get only two or three lines of it:

“Her dust and ruins that remain
Are precious in our eyes;
Those ruins shall be built again,
And all that dust shall rise.”

You remember that, Father Waterbury; find it for me sometime.

God means something by this disaster. If such a torch be lifted, it means to light us somewhere. I wish that fire had burned up all our sins. I wish that it might teach us what a poor foundation man builds on when he builds in this world, and that iron and brick and granite are wax when God breathes on them. We see that there is nothing of an earthly nature safe. Does not the telegraph flashing from all parts of the earth now bring baleful tidings? You are not safe on land or on sea. Witness the Portuguese bark driven, on night before last, on Peaked Head Bar, and the bark Kadosh on Aldernon Point. Ay, you are not safe on the other side of the sea. Witness the hurricane that last week swept over London; witness the floods that swept through Derbyshire. You are not safe on the rail train. The lightning express last week rolls over an embankment in Pennsylvania, and thirty lives are ground out. On last Tuesday night the floor gives way under a festival, and the mangled children are dragged out on the snow for fathers and mothers to look at. God, by fire, and earthquake, and storm, is crying to all the earth, saying: “Build higher; build firmer; build on the rock.” I am glad to bear that there were some of our people who, in the presence of that raving, thundering ruin last Sabbath morning, resolved to be the Lord’s. They started for heaven. They say: “Is this the way things go on earth? Give me something better, something stronger, something that will last.”

My friends, all these flames in Brooklyn and in Chicago and in Boston are only prefigurements of a great day of fire which you and I will see just as certainly as you sit there and I stand here. That day the fire will test us thoroughly. It will show whether our religion is a reality, or whether it is a false -fiice. When that fire comes over the fields, it will come swifter than an autumnal fire across the Illinois prairie. Before it, beasts will dash from the rocks in wild leap. Coming over the precipices, it will be a Niagara of fire. The continents of earth will wrap themselves in a winding-sheet of flame, and the mountains will cry to the plain, “Fire!” and the plain will cry to the sea, “Fire!” and the sea will cry to the sky, “Fire!” and heaven will answer back to earth, and the caverns will groan it, and the winds will shriek it, and the thunders will toll it, and the storms will wail it, and the nations will cry it, “Fire! fire!” And the day will burn on, and away will go all the churches you ever built, and away will go all your store-houses, and away will go all your cities. But what will become of those who have no Christ, no sins pardoned, no heaven secured? Oh, I wish that this morning, in our first service in this beautiful place, the hour might be signalized by a great stampede for heaven! I wish that you would all come in, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, sons, daughters, friends, and neighbors. In the presence of the great sorrow that has come upon us, can you not do that? Do you believe that if this morning, with all the solemn surroundings of the past week, you reject the Gospel of Christ, you will ever feel? Do not some of you think that this is the last opportunity? Do you not feel that if you drive away the Spirit of God, he will never come back? Do you not think that God is speaking to me, and speaking to you all? Oh! that this house, set apart for secular song, might this morning hear sweeter music, namely, the angelic minstrelsy that sounds when sins are pardoned, and God is glorified, and Jesus sees the travail of his soul, and is satisfied. Strike all your harps, ye spirits blessed, the prodigal is come home! Clap your hands, all ye people, the lost is found 1

120 THINGS NOT BUltNED UP.