A similar foreboding is expressed, according to Matthew, Mark, and John, in reference to an incident which is variously described by these three Evangelists. Matthew and Mark agree in saying, that on this occasion he was taking a repast at the house of Simon the leper, when a woman came up to him with a box of very precious ointment and poured it on his head. Here, according to Mark, "some," according to Matthew, "the disciples," were indignant at the waste of the ointment, which might, they said, have been sold "for much," or "for three hundred pence," and the proceeds given to the poor. But Jesus warmly took up the woman's cause, for, he remarked, "she has wrought a good work on me. For you always have the poor with you, but me ye have not always. For in pouring this ointment on my body she has done it for my burial." Mark now how strangely this simple story has been perverted in the fourth Gospel to suit the purposes of the writer. The date he assigns to it—six days before the passover—is nearly the same as that given in the second Gospel, where it is placed two days before that festival. The place, Bethany, is also identical. But the other circumstances are widely different. In this Gospel alone is anything known of an intimate friend of Jesus, Lazarus by name. In it alone is there any mention of one of his most astounding miracles, the restoration of Lazarus to life. Consistently with his peculiar notion of the relations of Jesus with this man's family he says nothing of Simon the leper, but without telling us in whose house Jesus was, mentions that Lazarus was among the guests, and that his sister Martha was serving. Further, he asserts that the woman who brought the ointment was Mary, the other sister. Instead of pouring it on his head, she is made to anoint his feet, and wipe them with her hair. Instead of the disciples, or some unknown people, being angry at the waste, it is Judas Iscariot in whose mouth the obnoxious comment is placed. The sum he names, three hundred pence, is the same as that assigned in Mark as the value of the ointment. But in order to cover Judas with still further obloquy, the Evangelist charges him with a desire to obtain this sum, not for the poor, but for himself; he being the bearer of the common purse, and being in the habit of dishonestly appropriating some portion of its contents (Mk. xiv. 3-9; Mt. xxvi. 6-13; Jo. xii. 3-8). Of such an accusation not a trace is to be found in the other Gospels, whose writers were assuredly not likely to spare the reputation of Judas if it were open to attack. Nor does the author of this insinuation offer one particle of evidence in its support.