For my part, I am very grateful that this word of Christ’s has been recorded. For it affords sufficient warrant for declaring the poet, the artist, the architect, and all those who are trying to make the world more beautiful, God’s servants too, offering Him a gift He does not disdain to recognise, as truly as the physician, the philanthropist, and the preacher whose object is to make it better. Beauty of form and structure has been lavished profusely by the Creator on creatures too small to be seen. There are more things grow out of God’s earth than corn for food or timber for building houses. There’s the heather and the wild flowers, the daisies and the violets. Hard-headed common-sense asks--What’s the use of them? What good do they do? The answer is that they are beautiful, and that seems in God’s sight to be justification enough for having made them. So when we see Love breaking her alabaster box, and pouring forth her offering without stint, as she is doing every day--a mother lavishing care upon an ungrateful son, a husband surrounding a peevish wife with a tireless devotion, or a sister keeping her own love-dream at arm’s length that she may guard and guide some graceless brother--let us lay our hands upon our lips when we are tempted to criticise. These actions may be foolish, extravagant, quixotic, and may outrage every canon of common-sense. But there is a fragrance about them without which the world would be much poorer. They are morally beautiful, and for that reason, our Lord Himself would teach us, they are not to be rudely handled nor judged by any hard standard. Yes, but He said more than that. He found a more complete extenuation of Mary’s extravagance. It was because she loved much. Her gift was an offering of love to Himself. "She hath done it for my burial." And that is the end of the whole matter, my brothers. Love is always extravagant when measured by the tape-line of bare duty. It always overflows. It breaks its box and gives everything it has. Yet, like the widow’s cruse of old, its casket is never empty, for even when it has given its all, the next needy case will find succour at that door. Take your charity subscription sheet to the man who loudly asserts that too much money is being given to the Kirk this dull season, and what will you get? Take it also to the man who has signed a bigger cheque than he can well afford that the House of his God may be made beautiful, and it will be strange if you are sent empty away. Ah no, it is not Mary, whose devotion has found outlet in some sudden generosity, it is not she who neglects the poor. PRAYER