tress you--it has gone
beyond recall; let not the morrow intrude upon you--it will bring its
cargo of cares when it comes. Man lives in the present and can claim
only the moment as it passes, but Christ teaches him how to so use each
hour as to make the days that are gone an echoing delight and the days
that are yet to come a radiant hope.

Christ has been called a sentimentalist. Let it be admitted; it is no
reproach. He is the inexhaustible source of sentiment, and sentiment
rules the world. "The dreamer lives forever; the toiler dies in a day."

A striking illustration of the emphasis that Christ placed upon
sentiment is found in Matthew 26:7-13:

There came unto him a woman having an alabaster box of very precious
ointment, and poured it on his head, as he sat at meat. But when his
disciples saw it, they had indignation, saying, To what purpose is
this waste? For this ointment might have been sold for much, and
given to the poor. When Jesus understood it, he said unto them, Why
trouble ye the woman? for she hath wrought a good work upon me. For
ye have the poor always with you, but me ye have not always. For in
that she hath poured this ointment on my body, she did it for my
burial. Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be
preached in the whole world, there shall also this, that this woman
hath done, be told for a memorial of her.

Eight verses devoted to an alabaster box of ointment! This is more space
than was given to many incidents seemingly more important, and at the
very crisis of His career, too. But who will estimate the value of this
narrative?

Judas complained that it was an inexcusable waste of money--Judas, the
thief, as Mark calls him, pretended concern about the poor. The poor
have received immeasurably more from the use made of this ointment than
they would have received had it been sold and the proceeds distributed
then. It was an expression of love, and love is the treasury box from
which the poor can always draw. That box of ointment has spread its
fragrance over nineteen hundred years. Give a man bread and he hungers
again; give him clothing and his clothing will wear out; but give him
an ideal--something to look up to through life--and it will be with him
through every waking hour lifting him to a higher plane and filling his
life with the beauty and the bounty of service. The money spent for a
loaf of bread may stay the pangs of hu