vagance, it is important to note the
principles upon which our Lord proceeds in His justification of her
action.

First, He says, this is an occasional, exceptional tribute. "The poor
always ye have with you, but me ye have not always." Charity to the poor
you may continue from day to day all your life long: whatever you spend
on me is spent once for all. You need not think the poor defrauded by
this expenditure. Within a few days I shall be beyond all such tokens of
regard, and the poor will still claim your sympathy. This principle
solves for us some social and domestic problems. Of many expenses common
in society, and especially of expenses connected with scenes such as
this festive gathering at Bethany, the question always arises, Is this
expenditure justifiable? When present at an entertainment costing as
much and doing as little material good as the spikenard whose perfume
had died before the guests separated, we cannot but ask, Is not this,
after all, mere waste? had it not been better to have given the value to
the poor? The hunger-bitten faces, the poverty-stricken outcasts, we
have seen during the day are suggested to us by the superabundance now
before us. The effort to spend most where least is needed suggests to
us, as to these guests at Bethany, gaunt, pinched, sickly faces, bare
rooms, cold grates, feeble, dull-eyed children--in a word, starving
families who might be kept for weeks together on what is here spent in a
few minutes; and the question is inevitable, Is this right? Can it be
right to spend a man's ransom on a mere good smell, while at the end of
the street a widow is pining with hunger? Our Lord replies that so long
as one is day by day considering the poor and relieving their
necessities, he need not grudge an occasional outlay to manifest his
regard for his friends. The poor of Bethany would probably appeal to
Mary much more hopefully than to Judas, and they would appeal all the
more successfully because her heart had been allowed to utter itself
thus to Jesus. There is, of course, an expenditure for display under the
guise of friendship. Such expenditure finds no justification here or
anywhere else. But those who in a practical way acknowledge the
perpetual presence of the poor are justified in the occasional outlay
demanded by friendship.

2. But our Lord's defence of Mary is of wider range. "Let her alone," He
says, "against the day of my burying hath she kept this." It was not
only occa