"Go to My brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto My "Go to My brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto My "Go to My brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto My SERMON I. Introductory Discourse. S. MARY MAGDALENE DESCRIBED. S. LUKE VII. 37. AND BEHOLD A WOMAN IN THE CITY WHICH WAS A SINNER. THERE are few narratives in Holy Scripture which more effectually rivet the attention and call forth the deeper feelings of our nature, than that of the woman who anointed our SAVIOUR with "very precious ointment" and "wiped His Feet withher hair," the odour of whose sacred action was to diffuse itself throughout the world in all times and places to which the Gospel should extend. We are seized with a kind of wonderment at the beauty, the boldness and originality (if we may so speak) of this woman's deed; and we are left in just that degree of suspense and perplexity about much of her story which, leading us to dwell upon it and imagine much about it, serves all the more to heighten its interest B and to fix indelibly on our minds such incidents as have been preserved to us by the HOLY SPIRIT. S. Luke speaks of "a woman in the city which was a sinner," words which, it must be confessed, convey to our ears sad and distasteful thoughts. S. John' moreover tells us that the woman who anointed our SAVIOUR was Mary sister of Lazarus, and this is doubly distressing to us, and we say, " Can it be that she who chose the good part, one of that family which JESUS loved and so highly distinguished, Mary who is such a model of serene, unperturbed, deep devotion, should ever have been so fearfully involved in sin, as seems to be implied in the words 'a woman in the city which was a sinner?' Not that our difficulty lies in this, that we think such a change could not be wrought in so great a sinner. Of course such a change could be wrought; we may not limit GOD's power-the wonder-working Gospel could effect this and more. We feel that the sister of Lazarus could indeed have been "the woman in the city that was a sinner," but are, we confess, most unwilling to admit it was so. We do not ordinarily and somehow cannot get ourselves to think of the sister of Lazarus whom the Gospel seems to invest in a self-conscious purity, as of one who had ever lived an abandoned life." But to let this pass-soon another point claims our attention. Is the Mary Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils, in S. Luke's eighth chapter, the same 2 See Appendix. 1 S. John xi. 2. person as the penitent woman of his seventh? These, then, are the questions that now come before us. Is S. Luke's woman in the city one and the same with Mary sister of Lazarus? If so, are we also to reckon Mary Magdalene one with the penitent, thus making Magdalene and the sister of Lazarus to be but one person? If our answers to these inquiries shall be in the affirmative, by no longer contemplating them as separate individuals, we shall learn more than one important lesson. For so regarded, what a great deal more we seem to know of Mary Magdalene than we knew before! How much more about Mary sister of Lazarus! How much more about the woman in the city! Separately, we know how we have derived comfort and instruction from the example of each; but could we see those several and distinct features of character, which our minds have been accustomed to dwell on apart, and perhaps even as the characteristics of three separate persons-could we see these harmonised and blended into one great whole, we should, while preserving all the advantages to be derived from a separate contemplation of the three, obtain our most important lessons from the new whole we have thus formed. What we loved well singly, we shall love better united; and we shall see in the combination of characteristics we have thought opposite, a variety of new beauties of which we had formed no conception while viewing them separately.' 1 See Appendix. Our first object will be to show that two actions of anointing, not one, are meant in the Gospels. All four Gospels contain some account of an anointing, but the several versions of the Evangelists vary not a little. S. Matthew's' and S. Mark's' agree. S. Luke's, however, you will observe, except for these three points of resemblance—that it is a case in which our SAVIOUR is anointed; that this anointing is the act of a woman, and takes place in the house of a man named Simon,—has little in common with the story told by the other Evangelists. Then with respect to S. John: he, we find, in two chapters, mentions the action,3 in one of them very cursorily, in the other at length. The account thus furnished by him, except in one or two particulars, is the same with the narratives of S. Matthew and S. Mark. Thus, then, we reduce our difficulty to this; that the difference in the main, lies between S. Luke and the other three Evangelists. Now S. Luke's account is as follows: "And one of the Pharisees desired HIM that He would eat with him. And He went into the Pharisee's house and sat down to meat. 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, 3 Although the word action is here used in the singular, it is believed that it is nevertheless not right to assign the words of S. John to one action only, as will hereafter be seen. |