The Best We Have

“And being in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious; and she brake the box, and poured it on his head. Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this Gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her.” — Marixiv., 3, 9.

IN a village where I once lived, on a cold night there was a cry of “fire.” House after house was consumed, but there was in the village a large, hospitable dwelling. As soon as people were burned out they came to this common centre. The good man of the house stood at the door, and said, “Come in,” and the little children, as they were brought to the door, some of them wrapped in blankets and shawls very hastily, were taken up to bed, and as the old people that came in from their consumed dwellings were seated around the fire, the good man of the house told them that all would be well. This is a very cold day to be burned out of house and home, but we come into this hospitable home to-night, and gather around this great warm fire of Christian kindness and love. And it is good to be here. The Lord built the Tabernacle and the Lord let it burn down; blessed be the name of the Lord! We do not feel like sitting down in discouragement, although the place was very dear to ns, our hearts often there

* Sermon preached at Plymouth Church on the evening of the day ia which the Brooklyn Tabernacle was burned.

having been comforted; and many and many a time did Jesus appear, his face radiant as the sun. To-day, when the Christian sympathy came in from Plymouth Church and ten other churches of the city, all offering their houses of worship to us, I must say that it became very damp weather about the eyelashes.

If any body tells you that there is no kindness between churches — if any body tells you that there is no such thing as Chi’istian brotherhood, tell him he lies! I find amidst the sorrows of the day one cause for extreme congratulation. I thank God that the fire took place when it did, and not an hour later. Had it come an hour later, when we were assembled for worship, many who are here to-night — (Mr. Talmnge hesitated, and was visibly much affected. In a moment he continued.) I will not finish that.

I shall say to you what I would have said this morning if my pulpit had not been burned up, more especially addressing my own people, who, through the courtesy of this church, are here to-night.

A man pale and wasted with recent sickness is entertaiuino- the doctor who cured him. Simon the host, Christ the guest. It is unpleasant to be interrupted at meals, and considerable indignation is aroused by the fact that a woman presses into the dining-hall with ointment made of spikes of nard, and pours this ointment on the head of Christ. It was an ointment so costly and so rare that the bestowment of it implied great admiration and affection. “Put her out!” cried the people; “what an outrageous interruption this is! why is this woman allowed to come in here?” Besides that, it i& such a lack of economy. Here she takes a stone-jar made from the mountains near the city of Alabastron — a stone-jar filled ‘ith perfume so costly that it might have purchased bread for the poor, and pours it on the head of one who cares nothing for the fragrance. “Stop,” said Jesus, “don’t put her out 1” He who had mingled the cup of all the flowers appreciated the breath of the nard, and he who had made the stone-jars in the factories of Alabastron knew the worth of that box. Jesus says: “The woman is right. She has done her best, and the perfume which fills this banqueting-house shall yet fill all the earth and all ages.”

I notice in this subject, in the first place, a very pleasant way of getting ourselves remenihered. Jesus says that this woman’s action of kindness and love shall be a memorial of her. I can not understand the feelings of those who would like to be remembered far on in the future, but I think it is pleasant for us to think that our friends and associates will remember us when we are gone. To get worldly fame men tread on nettles, and work mightily and die wretchedly. Human aggrandizement gives no permanent satisfaction.

I had an aged friend who went into the White House when General Jackson was President of the United States, four days before he left the White House, and ac President said to him, “I am bothered almost to death. People strive for this White House as though it were some grand thing to get here, but I tell you it is a perfect hell!” There was nothing in the elevation the world had given him that rendered him satisfaction, or could keep off the annoyances and vexations of life.

A man writes a book. He thinks it will circulate for a long while. Before long it goes into the archives of the city library to be disturbed once a year, and that when the janitor cleans house! A man builds a splendid home, and thinks he will get fame from it. ‘A few years pass along, and it goes down under the auctioneer’s mallet at the executor’s sale, and a stranger buys it.

The Pyramids were constructed for the honor of the men who ordered them built. Who built them? Do not know! For whom were they built? Do not know; their whole history is an obscuration and a mystery. There were men in Thebes and Tyre and Babylon who strove for great eminence, but they were forgotten; while the woman of the text, who lovingly accosted Jesus has her memorial in all the ages. Ah! men and women of God, I have found out the secret: that which we do for ourselves is forgotten; that which we do for Christ is immortal. They who are kind to the sick, they who instruct the ignorant, they who comfort the troubled, shall not be forgotten.

There have been more brilliant women than Florence Nightingale, but all the world sings her praise. There have been men of more brain than Missionary Carey; their names are forgotten, while his is famous on the records of the Christian Church. There may have been women with vases more costly than that which was brought into the house of Simon the leper; but their names have been forgotten, while I stand before you to-night reading the beautiful story of this Bethany worshiper. In the gallery of heaven are the portraits of Christ’s faithful servants, and the monuments may crumble, and earth may burn, and the stars may fall, and time may perish; but God’s faithful ones shall be talked of among the thrones, and from the earthly seed they sowed there shall be reaped a harvest of everlasting joy.

In contrast with the struggle for earthly aggrandizement, I put the life and the death of an aged Christian minister who lay down in the country parsonage the other day and died. A brilliant intellect, a large heart, and a consecrated life were the alabaster-box he brought to Jesus. For forty years he had toiled for the welfare of men, and then he laid down peacefully and died. We went out to put him away to his sleep. For hours the carriages came over the hills and through the valleys. The aged came, who had forty years ago entertained him at their own firesides. The young came, who had taken his benediction from the marriage altar. Ministers of all denominations of Christians came, with whom he had mingled in Christian counsel. We joined hands that day in new consecration to the cause for which he had lived and died, and there we put him away in the shadow of the old meeting-house, amidst the graves of his kindred, and whole generations in the door of whose sepulchre he had stood with consolation, and so on the morning of the resurrection, when he rises up, he will find his old friends all around him, and say: “I baptized you; I married you; I buried you; this is the day of which I often spoke; it is the resurrection!” When I came to talk of his departure, I did not have long to look for a text; this one immediately flashed upon my mind: “Let me die the death of the righteous — let my last end be like his.”

I learn further from this subject that Christ deserves the test of every tiling. That woman could have got a vase that would not have cost so much as those made of alabaster. She might have brought perfume that would have cost only fifty pence; this cost three hundred. As far as I can understand, her whole fortune was in it. She might have been more economical; but no — she gets the very best box, and puts in it the very best perfume, and pours it all out on the head of her Kedeemer. My brothers and sisters in Christ, the trouble is that we bring to Christ too cheap a box. If we have one of alabaster and one of earthenware, we keep the first for ourselves, and we give the latter to Christ. We owe Jesus the best of our time, the best of our talents, the best of every thing. Is there an hour in the day when we are wider awake than any other, more capable of thought and feeling, let us bring that to Christ. We are apt to take a few moments in the morning when we are getting awake, or a few moments at night when we are getting asleep, to Jesus. If there be an hour in the day when we are most appreciative of God’s goodness and Christ’s pardon and heaven’s joy, oh that is the alabaster - box to bring to Jesus. We owe Christ the very best years of our life. When the sight is the clearest, when the hearing is the acutest, when the arm is the strongest, when the nerves are the steadiest, when the imagination is the brightest, let us come to Jesus, and not wait until our joints are stiffened with rheumatism, and the glow is gone out of our temperament, and we arise in the morning as weary as when we laid down at night.

How often we bring the broken pitcher of exhausted faculties instead of the bright alabaster-box! Men come to Christ when they have a great pain, or when some terror looks in at the store or house; but how few well men, how few prospered men, come to Jesus! Christ has whole piles of broken ware thrown at his feet. We take the best of the lumber for our own structure, and give Christ the chips. We eat the ripe, luscious clusters, and give Christ the rinds and the peelings. The best thing we can do is to bring our infancy; the next best thing, our youth; the next best thing, our athletic manhood; but I tell you, the poorest thing we can do is to bring our emaciation and sickness. Would it not be sad if, after all the blessings we have had, we should bring to Christ a wasted skeleton and an empty skull? or a shattered box, when Jesus knows that for years we have had in our possession the vases of Alabastron?

The people of Circassia used, until sixty years of age, to worship on the outside of the temple. They let the younger people go in. These old men tarried outside, because they wanted to give themselves up to worldliness and vice. At sixty years of age they proposed to go in and worship. How many stand now on the outside of the temple of Christian sanctification and Christian work, expecting after a while to go in! I can think of but two aged men that the Bible speaks of as coming to God, Abraham, in the Old Testament, and Nicodemus, in the lew. “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.” Oh that to-night I might twine all these youthful hearts into a wreath for my blessed Jesus!

But I remark further, that we owe to Christ the best of all our affections. If there is any body on earth you love better than Jesus, you wrong him. Who has ever been so loving and pure and generous? Which one of your friends offered to pay all your debts, and carry all ^=^.

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lOJ. THE BEST WE HAVE.

your burdens, and suffer all your pains? Wbicli one of them offered to go into the grave to make you richer? Tell me who he is, and where he lives, that I may go and worship him also. No, no, you know there has never been but one — Jesus — and that if he got his dues, we would bring to him all the gems of the mountains, and all the pearls of the sea, and all the flowers of the field, and all the fruits of the tropics, and all the crowns of dominion, and all the boxes of alabaster. If you have any brilliancy of wit, bring it; any clearness of judgment, any largeness of heart, any attractiveness of position, bring them. Away with the cheap bottles of stale perfume, when you may fill the banqueting-hall of Christ with exquisite aroma! Paul had made great speeches before, but he made his best speech for Christ. John had warmth of affection in other directions, but he had his greatest warmth of affection for Christ. Kobert M’Cheyne was weary before, but he worked himself to death for Christ. Jesus deserves the best word we ever uttered, the gladdest song we ever sang, the lovingest letter we ever wrote, the healthiest day we ever lived, the strongest heart-throb we ever felt.

I will go further, and say we owe to Christ all our Icindred and friends. Is thei’e a child in your household especially bright and beautiful, take it right up to Jesus. Hold it in baptism before him; kneel beside it in prayer; take it right up to where Jesus is. Oh, do you not know, father and mother, that the best thing that could happen to that child would be to have Jesus put his hands on it?, If some day Jesus should come to the household, and take one away to come back never, never, do not resist him; his heart is warmer, his arm stronger than yours. The cradle for a child is not so safe a place as the arms of Jesus. If Christ should come into your household where you have your very best treasures, and should select from all the caskets an alabaster-box, do not repulse him. It has seemed as if Jesus took the best; from many of your households the best one is gone. You knew that she was too good for this world; she was the gentlest in her ways, the deepest in her affections, and when at last the sickness came, you had no faith in medicines. You knew that Jesus was coming over the door-sill. You knew that the hour of parting had come, and when, through the rich grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, you surrendered that treasure, you said, “Lord Jesus, take it — it is the best we have — take it. Thou art worthy.” The others in the household may have been of grosser mould; she was of alabaster.

The other day a man was taking me from the depot to a village. He was very rough and coarse, and very blasphemous; but after a while he mellowed down as he began to talk of his little son whom he had lost. “Oh, sir!” he said, “that boy was different from the rest of us. He never used any bad language; no, sir. I never heard him use a bad word in my life. He used to say his prayers, and we laughed at him; but he would keep on saying his prayers, and I often thought I can’t keep that child; and I said to my wife, ‘Mother, we can’t keep that child.’ But, sir, the day he was drowned, and they brought him in and laid him down on the carpet so white and so beautiful, my heart broke, sir. I knew we could not keep him.” Yes, yes, that is Christ’s way; he takes the alabaster-box.

Kow, my friends, this woman made her offering to Christ. What offering have you to make to Jesus? She brought an alabaster-box, and she brought ointment. Some of you have been sick. In the hours of loneliness and suffering, you said, “Lord Jesus, let me get well this time, and I will be consecrated to thee.” The medicines did their work; the doctor was successful; you are well; you are here to-night. What offering have you to make to the Lord Jesus who cured you? Some of you have been out to Greenwood, not as those who go to look at the monuments and criticise the epilaphs, but in the procession that came out of the gate with one less than when you went in. And yet you have been comforted. The grave-digger’s spade seemed to turn up the flowers of that good land where God shall wipe away the tears from your eyes. For that Jesus who so comforted you and so pitied you, what offering have you to make? Some of you have passed without any special trouble. To-day at noon, when you gathered around the table, if you had called the familiar names, they would have all answered. Plenty at the table, plenty in the wardrobe. To that Jesus who has clothed and fed you all your life-long, to that Jesus who covered himself with the glooms of death that he might purchase your emancipation, what offering of the soul have you to make?

The woman of the text brought the perfumes of nard. You say, “The flowers of the field are all dead now, and we can not bring them.” I know it. The flowers on the platform are only those that are plucked from the grim hand of Death; they are the children of the hot-house. The flowers of the field are all dead I We saw them blooming in the valleys and mountains; they ran. up to the very lips of the cave; they garlanded the neck of the hills like a May-queen. They set their banquet of golden cups for the bee, and dripped in drops of honeysuckle for the humming-bird. They dashed their antlers against the white hand of the sick child, and came to the nostrils of the dying like spice gales from heaven. They shook in the agitation of the bride, and at the burial hour rang the silver chime of a resurrection. Beautiful flowers! Bright flowers 1 Sweet flowers! But they are all dead now. I saw their scattered petals on the foam of the wild brook, and I pulled aside the hedge and saw the place where their corpses lay. We can not bring the flowers. What shall we bring? Oh, from our hearts’ affections to-night, let us bring the sweet-smelling savor of a Christian sacrifice! Let us bring it to Christ; and as we have no other vase in which to carry it, let this glorious Sabbath hour be the alabaster-box.

Eawlins White, an old martyr, was very decrepit, and for years he had been bowed almost double, and could hardly walk; but he was condemned to death, and on his way to the stake, we are told, the bonds of his body seemed to break, and he roused himself up as straight and exuberant as an athlete, and walked into the fire singing victory over the flames. Ah, it was the joy of dying for Jesus that straightened his body and roused his soul! If we suffer with him on earth, we shall be glorified with him in heaven. Choose his service; it is a blessed service. Let no man or woman go out of this house to-night unblessed. Jesus spreads out both arms of his mercy. He does not ask where you came from or what have been your wanderings; but he says, with a pathos and tenderness that ought to break you down, “Come unto me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Who will accept the offer of his mercy?

“Shall Jesus bear the cross alone,
And all the world go free?
No, there’s a cross for every one,
And there’s a cross for me.”