Connecticut western news., 1905-11-16
Cto. text ,,iS mn =. lnd-

mn ~ dnd-
 ing hillsides h3But. lea to then reser-
 voirs. They would gather into their
 depths the waters from the fountains
 beneath and from the showers over
 head. But. though they take In every
 thing they can, they never have any
 outfiowings. They would never give
 anything to anybody else unless they
 were compelled so to do. Their hands
 are like steel traps. They keep the
 palms open only as long as they have
 nothing on them. But as soon as any thing touches their skin their open palms fly shut and every finger be- comes a wise and every muscle as rig
 Id as a band of steel. Their doctrine Is,
 What Is yours ought to be mine and what is mine Is my own" Truly they
 hang on to everything they can. Their appetites are omnivorous. But, like
 great stagnant pools, they become stenchful through their immobility.
 Their love of other people is completely
 circumscribed by their love of self. Selfish love has even q more con-
 temptible characteristic than a mere
 brutal love for self. As a rule, selfish
 men consider it a personal reflection on | themselves if other people are not just
 as mean and selfish as they are. When | any one makes d sacrifice for another | they give themselves to fault finding,
 are always complaining and always | trying to depreciate the good which 1 that person has tried to do. If q man | like Andrew Carnegie endows libra " they raise protesting voice and cry, saying: What Is the good of giv- | ing a pile of books to lot of work | men who never read2 Why does he | not give them loaf of bread instead of a printed pageT If d philanthro- l pist offers to give a loaf of bread every
 midnight to every person who comes | for it they say: What Is the good of | feeding lot of dirty tramps and dead | beats? 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 any one 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 Si- mon the leper in the time of Christ, as | they are in the homes of our modern
 Bethanys They never give a cent to any one if they can help 1t, and they | hate to see any one else give away cent. Thus when the woman of my | text, to show her love for Christ, en- tered the dining hall and broke an | alabaster box and poured the oint- ment of spikenard very precious upon- i 'cnf ..'..-...==a tns l!iniehceS eb com plain. Absurd. absurdw they erica. That ointment could have been sold for 300 pence and given to the poor. | Why all this waste?" Then said Jesus: i Let her alone. She hath wrought d good work on me, for ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good, but me ye
 have not always" Then Christ utter
 ed 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 encomi-
 um from the Saviour's lips. But is
 Jesus the only being who has had
 woman break over his head an ala
 baster 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 sacrificing women, who
 have for us literally done what they
 could? "Yes. Yes" most of us can
 answer, i've have. We have"
 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 literally did all
 they could to bring us to our truest
 and fullest mental and physical and spiritual development.
 Where shall we begin to find these female characters, who have broken for us their alabaster box of ointment
 of spikenard very precious? Naturally
 we start with that sweet face that lowered about our cradle. When we go back to the dim recollections of childhood we remember that mother as
 always busy. She was either cleaning
 the parlors, or making the beds, or go-
 ing out to market, or busy with her | needle at a big basket filled with the
 weeks clean washing. We never re
 member her asleep unless she was sick
 In bed under the doctors care or un- less 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, "is my first picture. Mother told me 1t was taken
 just a short time after I was chris | tened She made that little dress with her own hands, and she thought so
 much of that dress that she kept 1t all her life After she was dead and we
 were going through her things I found | 1t. The lace was just as you see 1t there. She must have thought a good deal of me to put so much work on i that dress when she had so much to do.
 And there is my picture taken just aft | CT my long attack of typhoid fever.
 My. look sick there. don't I? They
 tell me she never left my room for six | long weeks. The doctors gave me up, but she never did. They say I would have died but for her And further
 more they say that 1t was her devotion
 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 hard time financial ly, and I used to get awfully discour- aged, but mother was my support. 1 She used to write and keep on writing