There is scarcely to be found, amid the incidents immediately preceding our Saviour's Passion, one more affecting or more exquisite than the anointing of His feet at Bethany by Mary the sister of Lazarus, which received its unexpected interpretation from the lips of Christ Himself. 'Let her alone. Against the day of My embalming hath she kept it.' (St. John xii. 7.) He assigns to her act a mysterious meaning of which the holy woman little dreamt. She had treasured up that precious unguent against the day,--(with the presentiment of true Love, she knew that it could not be very far distant),--when His dead limbs would require embalming. But lo, she beholds Him reclining at supper in her sister's house: and yielding to a Divine impulse she brings forth her reserved costly offering and bestows it on Him at once. Ah, she little knew,--she could not in fact have known,--that it was the only anointing those sacred feet were destined ever to enjoy!... In the meantime through a desire, as I suspect, to bring this incident into an impossible harmony with what is recorded in St. Mark xvi. 1, with which obviously it has no manner of connexion, a scribe is found at some exceedingly remote period to have improved our Lord's expression into this:--'Let her alone in order that against the day of My embalming she may keep it.' Such an exhibition of the Sacred Text is its own sufficient condemnation. What that critic exactly meant, I fail to discover: but I am sure he has spoilt what he did not understand: and though it is quite true that [Symbol: Aleph]BD with five other Uncial MSS. and Nonnus, besides the Latin and Bohairic, Jerusalem, Armenian, and Ethiopic versions, besides four errant cursives so exhibit the place, this instead of commending the reading to our favour, only proves damaging to the witnesses by which it is upheld. We learn that no reliance is to be placed even in such a combination of authorities. This is one of the places which the Fathers pass by almost in silence. Chrysostom[405] however, and evidently Cyril Alex.[406], as well as Ammonius[407] convey though roughly a better sense by quoting the verse with [Greek: epoiese] for [Greek: tetereken]. Antiochus[408] is express. [A and eleven other uncials, and the cursives (with the petty exception already noted), together with the Peshitto, Harkleian (which only notes the other reading in the margin), Lewis, Sahidic, and Gothic versions, form a body of authority against the palpable emasculation of the passage, which for number, variety, weight, and internal evidence is greatly superior to the opposing body. Also, with reference to continuity and antiquity it preponderates plainly, if not so decisively; and the context of D is full of blunders, besides that it omits the next verse, and B and [Symbol: Aleph] are also inaccurate hereabouts[409]. So that the Traditional text enjoys in this passage the support of all the Notes of Truth.]