"I had dined every week all winter with Dr. ----," said a lady to me, "and never guessed that he was a clergyman till yesterday!" Johnson said of Burke, that "you could not stand with him five minutes under a gateway in a shower of rain, without finding out that he was an extraordinary man,"--and how long shall it take people to learn that you are a Christian?--one bought back from slavery, called to be a saint, heir of a kingdom? Ah, how ready men are to parade their worldly honours; their orders of merit and badges of bravery; but leave their Christian colours at home, and hide their uniform with a pair of the world's overalls! Alas!--"If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself for battle?" [27] Yes, if you can go into mixed society as the Lord went, then go. But otherwise, for your own enjoyment, a different model is set. "Then Jesus, six days before the passover, came to Bethany, where Lazarus was which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead. There they made him a supper; and Martha served; but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him. Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment." [28] How exquisite the picture! how rare the intercourse, how precious the results! A few of the Lord's own people met together with the Lord himself; the one expensive thing mentioned being bought for him. It was only "a supper"; and there were sorrows before them, and sorrows behind, and only the spikenard was "very costly,"--that consecration to God which gives him all we have: but its fragrance filled the house. And not all Arabia was ever so perfumed.