is yet alive, and sees the face of the King; he thinks of you, and, perhaps, inquires for you, of those who come to heaven, as Joseph did concerning his father. If bereavement shall be the means of making you a Christian, it will prove that God, in his kind and wise providence, sent the child before you "to preserve life," in the sense of saving your soul.

your

Have your children ever heard you sing, or repeat, a hymn in praise of Christ, or seen you bow the knee to him? You love your children, and, it may be, idolize them. What if you be bereaved, in the other world, of parental joys; what if you fail to look on that heavenly society, where the young now make it perpetual morning and spring; where children are not unlike flowers and birds to the earth, and where the redemption which was bestowed upon millions of them will pour forth treasures of its love forever, on the happy spirits of the redeemed. Childhood, with some of you, is gone, and Christ had no worship from you. Youth is gone, and the Saviour had no dew of your youth. Ripe years, with you, are falling into the 'sere and yellow leaf,' and you are without Christ. You have a great work to do, and much time to redeem, if you would be found in the number of those who will, at last, appear before Christ, and say, BEHOLD, I AND THE CHIL

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DREN WHICH GOD HATH GIVEN ME."

SERMON VII.

THE WOMAN WITH THE ALABASTER BOX.

LUKE VII. 37, 38.

AND BEHOLD, A WOMAN IN THE CITY, WHICH WAS A SINNER, WHEN SHE KNEW THAT JESUS SAT AT MEAT IN THE PHARISEE'S HOUSE, BROUGHT AN ALABASTER BOX OF OINTMENT, AND STOOD AT HIS FEET BEHIND HIM, WEEPING, AND BEGAN TO WASH HIS FEET WITH TEARS, AND DID WIPE THEM WITH THE HAIRS OF HER HEAD, AND KISSED HIS FEET, AND ANOINTED THEM WITH THE OINTMENT.

HERE is a scene and a transaction, expressing the most intense love, in which not a word is spoken by the principal character. Her feelings were too deep for words. The whole occurrence will appear natural and easy, if we transfer it to our own times.

Suppose that you are sitting at your table, with a company of friends. A stranger glides into the room, with an air of deep grief, earnest, negligent in apparel, yet interesting and striking in her whole appearance. Passing round to one of your guests, and standing behind him, with a look that indicates. love blended with sorrow, she bursts into a flood of tears.

If there were any reason to suspect her of insanity, or of a design to insult that guest, or to obtain redress from him by exposing his offences against her to the company, your first impulse would be to have her removed. But if you saw that she was overcome by love and tenderness, and that your guest turned toward her with no forbidding look, but in a way that encouraged her tears, and especially if that guest were a distinguished and good man, for whom you had made that company, your respect for him, and confidence in him, would make you wait in silence to see what he would say and do with regard to that incident, which you would suspect had a meaning and an object, with which you would not feel at liberty to interfere.

We may account, therefore, for the intrusion of this woman into the Pharisee's house at dinner, and his not commanding her to be removed, by making his case our own. He saw that there was some connection between his guest and this stranger, which made it unsuitable for him to interpose. He felt that Christ would treat the stranger in a way becoming the civility and courtesy due to the master of the house. We see his sense of propriety in not making the remark to Christ, but within himself": "This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him; for she is a sinner."

We see the Saviour reclining, according to the oriental custom, at the table of a Pharisee, upon the couch; and a woman, impelled by the deepest emotion, entering into the presence of the Pharisee, a stranger to him, unbidden, for the purpose of finding Christ. Let us see what she will do. She stands at the Saviour's feet, as he reclined, with his feet extended, upon the couch; and immediately, as the original has it, she began to rain tears upon his feet. She did not come for that purpose, however. This was an involuntary prelude to her main object. She had something for his feet besides tears; but, as she prepared herself to bestow that other token upon them, her emotions were excited, and the rain descended from her eyes so as to prevent, for a time, her purpose. As fast as her eyes were clouded with her weeping, and overflowed, she wiped the feet on which they fell, with her dishevelled hair, to prepare them for what she had brought. As fast as she dried them thus, they were wet again; till, at length, she grew composed; when, with ardent love and worship, she kissed the feet, and poured on them her alabaster box of ointment. This was a service frequently done to invited guests in the houses of the rich. Their feet were washed to cool them, their heads were anointed with oil, and sometimes their feet were softened and refreshed by anointing them with oil. This woman had bought an alabaster box, filled, not

with common oil, but with a prepared ointment. She would not pour it upon Christ's head; she was not worthy to touch that head; she went to his feet, and there poured out the gift, which would have been a creditable offering for the richest man to pour upon the head of a guest.

In the Saviour's own words, we have an explanation of this act. "Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much." This tells the whole secret of those tears, that kiss, that precious gift, and of the impassioned freedom which carried her into the presence, and to the very table, of the Pharisee. This woman was a sinner. Her history, could we read it, would, doubtless, make us weep. Whatever of wrong, or suffering, she had experienced, is concealed from us, and all we know is, that she was a sinner. It was not a case of injured innocence, palliating guilt. She was a sinner; and the compassionate Saviour himself tells us, her sins were many."

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The city mentioned in this chapter, previously to this narrative, is Nain; and nothing forbids us to adopt the supposition of some critics, that this woman lived there. She had met with Christ, then, in his public ministrations in the city of Nain. There she had heard, perhaps she was an eye-witness, of his stopping a funeral procession, and raising to life a young man, the only son of his mother, and