Sunday Reading.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 2544, 29 November 1924, Page 3

Sunday Reading.

works as unto Christ. To bring'forth these peculiar services, certain feelings move within the believer’s bosom. The first and the most powerful, probably, is gratitude. “We love Him because He first loved us.” He lived for us; He died for us; He rose for us; He pleads for us. We owe all to Him. The natural impulse of the renewed heart-is to say, “What can I do for Him? I love His people, but I love Him best. I love His plnisters, but He is beyond them all. I love His .cause in the earth, but I love Himse.f better. While I Owe Much to His Church and to His ministers, I owe most to Him; I want to show Him, by some direct act done for Him, that my heart adores Him for all He has done for me.” There Is a good defence for any kind of work which you may do unto Jesus, and unto Jesus only. However large the cost, nothing is wasted which is expended upon the Lord, for Jesus deserves it. What if it did no service to any other, did it please Him? He has a right to It. Is nothing to be done for the Master of the feast? Are we to be so looking after the sheep as never to djo honour to the shepherd? Are the servants to be cared for, and may we do nothing for the well-beloved Lord Himself? I have sometimes felt in my soul the wish that I had none to serce but my Lord. When I have tried to do my best to serve God,, and a cool-bloodcd critic Has Pulled My Work to Pieces, I have thought, “I did not do it for you! I would not have done it for you! I did it for my Lord. Your judgment Is _a small matter. You condemn what He commends.” Thus may you go about your service, my brother, and feel, “I do it for Christ, and I believe that Christ accepts my service, and I am well content.” Besides, you may depend upon it that any action which appears to you useless, if you do it promptly by love, has a p’aco in Christ’s plan, and wMI be turned to high account. This anointing of our Lord’s head Was Said to be Useless. "No," said Jesus, “it falls in just in its propfef place—-she has done it for My burial.” There have been men who have done an herioo deed for Christ, and at the time they did it, they might have asked, “How will this subserve my Lord’s purpose?” But somehow It was the very thing that was wanted. When WhitefieUl and Wesley turned out into the fields to preach, it was thought to be a fanatical innovation, and perhaps they themselves would not have ventured upon it if there had not been an absolute necessity; but by what seemed to that age a daring deed they set the example to all Eng'and, and open-air preaching has become an acc’epted agency of large value. If you, for Christ’s sake, become Quixotic, never mind; your folly may be the wisdom of ages to come.

Once again, the woman’s loving act was not wasted; for it has helped us all down to this very moment. There has it stood in the Book; and all who have read it, and are right in heart, have been fired by it to sacred consecration out of love to Jesus. That woman has been a preacher to nineteen centuries; the influence of that alabaster box is not exhausted to-day, and never will be. Whenever you meet a friend in Europe. Asia, Africa, or America, who has done anything unto our Lord JeSus, you stiT smell I the perfume of the sacred spikenard. 1 Her holv act is doing all of us good at this hour. j

v MARY’S LOVE-GIFT,

Text: “She hath a good work upon Mq.-—Matt, xxvi.,lo. Study carefully the story of the enthusiastic Christian woman who pour, ed the alabaster box of very precious ointment upon the head of our everblessed Lord and Saviour. Honoured as that action Isl.by the universal Church of God, it did not escape criticism among the - religious people of her own day. The disciples cen sured her, but Christ defended her; and in the course of His vindication of her He said, “Why trouble ye the woman? for she hath wrought a good work upon Me.” There is no reason for troubling gracious men and' wonen; and specially no cause for so doing, when their work is good, and is done for their Lord. Yet are there plenty of troublers around us to this day, and we could spare a few of them from our own immediate neighbourhood. They are only ab’e to worry us so far,as we think of them, and therefore we will let the wasps alone, and feed upon the honey which flowed from the lips of our Lord Jesiis. Observe that this woman' had wrought a good work —good in intent, and good in itself. Her Lord said so, and His verdict ends all debate. Whether this woman, with some Prophetic Spirit Besting Upon Her, saw further into our Lord’s words than His disciples did, we do not know, but Jesus declared that she did it for His burial —as it were, embalming Him a little before the time for His closely-approaching sojourn in the tomb. There was a great appropriateness than she herse’f knew of at the time she did it: but it is ever so with loving hearts; reason does not guide them; but by a kind of holy instinct they hit upon the right thing. Where reason laboriously finds out wisdom, love discovers it at once. There are instincts of pure hearts that are more to be trusted than the conclusions of argumentative minds, The safest logic is often that of the heart, when at once it devises liberal things for Jesus. Mind you never set that 'ogle aside. Here love devised the very deed that was required—the fittest action that cou'd have been Imagined under the sad circumstances so near at. handTo come back to the point, however, which the woman was aiming at, she did all this, appropriate or not. to Jesus. It was a good work; but the point of it was that it was a good work wrought on Him. On this cersfion I wish to speak of good works v, i ought on Jesus, and therefore I shall not be speaking to you all. Many of You are Incapable of Working a good work for Christ; for you are not saved yet. How can an evil tree bring forth good fruit? How can those who do not believe in Jesus do anything for Him? It is not yet time for you to do Him. Your first business is that He should do everything for you. You must'go to Him as guilty sinners, and find mercy in Him. I speak at this time only to those who have trusted in the Lord Jesus and so have been set apart by Him, and sanctified for ever by H;s one sacrifice. These, owing as they do so much to their Lord, are those to whom I would speak now, and say. Render unto Him good works that shall terminate in Him, and shall be made to express your love to Him. Good works wrought upon Jesus, or solely in reference to Him, are to be our subject. 1. And, first, there are feelings which, prompt true believers to do