MARY ANOINTING THE FEET OF CHRIST.

Six days before the last solemn feast of the Passover, our Lord, in his way to Jerusalem, called at Bethany, where be was entertained at supper by Martha and Mary, the two sisters of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. Mary, to express her veneration for the Saviour, anointed his feet with a quantity of expensive ointment composed of spikenard, and of so fragrant a quality that the whole house was filled with the perfume which exhaled from it. "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." Judas Iscariot, who had charge of the purse in which money for charitable and necessary uses was deposited, censured the woman for her extravagance in employing for such a purpose an expensive compound, which, if it had been sold, would have realised a considerable sum. He mentions three hundred pence; and as the Roman penny amounted to sevenpence halfpenny of our money, he valued the ointment used upon this occasion at nine pounds seven shillings and sixpence sterling. The expostulation of Judas, as was sufficiently proved in the event, did not arise from any anxiety concerning the poor, but was merely suggested by his own covetousness, he being a person greedy of gain, as his treachery towards his divine master sufficiently proved. Christ, knowing Mary's piety and the hypocrisy of his disciple, commended what the former had done as a becoming ceremony to solemnise his approaching death; but censured the latter's pretended concern for the poor, since the poor they would always have with them, whilst his continuance among them was only for a season. As they were at supper a great number of Jews came to Bethany, not only to see Jesus, but Lazarus likewise, whom he had raised from the dead, and who was present upon this occasion, in consequence of which the chief of their nation consulted how they might destroy both him and the Messiah.