The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-11-19


 of dirty tramps and deadbeats? These men ought to be made to work as I have to work?" Thus wherever we turn we find some men, and. alas, they are many, with these two miserable characteristics. They refuse to do anything for anyone else. and they find fault with all those who are trying to do what these selfish men ought to do.
 Some of these carping, selfish, fault finding critics were in the home of simon the leper in the time of Christ, IS they are In the homes of our modern Bethanys. They never give a cent to any one If they can help it, and they hate to see any one else give away cent. Thus when the woman of my text to show her love for Christ, entered the dining hall and broke an alabaster box and poured the ointment of spikenard very precious upon Christ's head they commenced to complain. Absurd, absurd!' they cried. That ointment could have been sold for 300 pence and given to the poor. Why all this waste?" Then said Jesus: Let her alone. She hath wrought good work on me, for ye have the poor with you all ways. and whensoever ye will ye may do them good, but me ye have not always" Then Christ uttered the words of my text "She hath done what she could" That means to the very best of her power she had shown her true love for Jesus Christ
 A Noble Sacrifice.
 Genuine and significant must have been the act of this woman of my text to have brought forth such an encomnium from the Saviour's lips. But Is Jesus the only being who has had a woman break over his head an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious? Have not some of us been surrounded in our babyhood in our boyhood in our young manhood in our middle age and old age, by just such noble self-saerificing women, who have for us literally done what they could? "Yes. Yes" most of us can an- swer. we have. We have" I would like to call to recollection some of our obligations. some of the services that we have received from devoted women, who would have laid down their lives if 1t had been necessary for our welfare. They lt- erally did all they could to bring us to our truest and fullest mental and physl- cal and spiritual development.
 Where shall we begin to find these fe- male characters, who have broken for us their alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious? Naturally we start with the sweet face that hovered about our cradle. When we go back to the dim recollections of childhood we re- member that mother as always busy. She was either cleaning the parlors or making the beds, or going out to market or busy with her needle at a big basket filled with the weeks clean washing. We never remember her asleep unless she was sick in bed under the doctors care or unless we crawled under her covers in the early morning when we awoke frightened from dreaming bad dreams She was always busy.
 Turn over the portraits in the family album "There," you say, lis my first picture. Mother told me 1t was taken just short time after I was -christened. She made that little dress with her own hands, and she thought so much of that dress that she kept it all her life. After she was dead and we were going through her things l found it. The lace was just as you see it there. She must have thought a good deal of me to put so much work on that dress when she had SO much to do. And there is my picture taken just after my long attack of ty- phoid fever My. look sick there, don't l? They tell me she never left my room for six long weeks The doctors gave me up, but she never did. They say l would have died but for her. And fur ther more they say that it was her de- votion to me that broke down her health and made her lifelong invalid.'
 Then you turn over another page of the old album. and you say: Here Is my picture when l was a college boy. We were having a hard time financially, and l used to get awfully discouraged, but mother was my support. She used to write and keep on writing to me She never lost heart no matter how black the clouds were And when think of her now I can say that a nobler, purer, better or more self-sacrificing woman than she never lived. All that I am is the result of her sacrifices made in the crisis of my early life" oh" you say, "I had good mother. She certainly did for me what she could"
 Euloey of Mothers.
 Cannot we all say that our mothers have broken for us the alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious upon our heads. and that they did what they could? Cannot we be as eulogistic of our mothers as Sir Thomas More was of his? When Thomas More was very little boy his mother went off on visit He wrote to her his first letter and ended it thus:
 Your absence all but i'll endure,
 And none so III as Thomas More.
 As he grew older and came to great fame he still seemed to feel that he could not do anything unless he had first gone and told her and asked her advice. He wrote every detail of his life to her He wrote To her almost every day of the week. At her death there were found over 4oO0 letters penned to her by hel noble son. And one of the last acts which he did before she died was tc send one of his books to her with these beautiful words written upon the fly leaf
 For her who was the critic of my first infant productions l have transcribed tn, few netle essays that follow. The critic praises from the head--the mother praises from the heart With one 1t Is a tribute nf bp nj ft is a off from the soul.' Was not that tribute o England's great statesman to his mother most beautiful? Yet cannot we all give our mothers the same tribute? Was there in our youth any worthy or meritorious act that was not of her suggestion or in. spring?
 Is not our position in the world today a tribute to her for what she did for us' A great cave, like the Mammoth cave oi Kentucky. has lately been discovered ir Tasmania. Travellers tell us that after the torches have been put out some oi the caVerns of that cave are ablaze witt light from the millions of glowworms which are kindling their phosphorescent lanterns upon the walls and the roof of rock. So every place in the dark corri dors of the past is ablaze with the lights of maternal self-sacrifice. We see these lights at the cradle; we see them bril- liant at the sick bed; we see them at col lege hall and afterwards in the struggles of our professional and mercantile ca reerS. Wherever we went. as long as oui mothers were alive. we knew that they were doing for us the best that they could. An many and many is the time they broke for us the alabaster box oi ointment of spikenard very precious To day we lay our garlands of tribute upor the graves of the beloved mothers whC cheerfullv did for us what they could