The Anointment of Jesus by Mary of Bethany [pp. 484-511]

BY MARY OF BETHANY.
hour of unresistance by the undertaker, do not measure the
feeling in question among us, and therefore do not show that we
can appreciate that feeling among theJews. Even those among
us who would now touch the insensible corpse as tenderly as if
it was all thrilling nerves, may be unable to comprehend the inmportance attached in some other age to a different expression of
tenderness. It was, therefore, not improbable that a Jewess, if
she thought of it, should anoint for burial before death, when
she found she could not do so afterwards.
It ma,y be objected that Mary could not formerly have expected the Jews to kill Jesus themselves, because they told Pilate it was "not lawful" for them "to put any man to death.",
Htowever this may be explained, they did in fact persistently attempt to kill him, and more than once actually took up stones
to kill him with;r actually killed Stephen afterwards,8 and
commi:sioned Saul of Tarsus to arrest many others to be put to
death by them.t If there was any such prohibition, and if
Miary knew of it, she also doubtless knew how easy it was to get
over it.
But if Mary knew so much of Jesus' predictions and had such
implicit faith in them, she must have expected his speedy resurrection. Then why pay him funeral honors at all?
All our reverent and costly attention to the deid comes from
feeling guided by custom, not from reasoning. We can give no
better reason for such attention to a dead body that will soon
be a loathsome mass and then rise after thousands of years, than
Mary could for the same attention to a body that would never
corrupt, but rise in three days. Besides this ante-mortem anointing may have been in view of suffering and dying rather than of
the state of death. If so, the duration of that state was immateriatl. If she knew all, we should expect she would do what she
did; for example, that she would bestow the tenderness so
touchi3ng'y described on the fet through which the cruel spikes
were so soon to be driven.
As MIary anointed Jesus for burial it was natural that she
should apply the ointment wherever' she'could,'to his head,
as stated by Matthew and Mark, and to his feet, as stated by
John. Each particular act mentioned in either of the different
Jo)hn 18: 31. r Johl 8: 59; 10: 31. Acts 7: 59. t Acts 9: 1, 2 22:
5; 6; 10 —12.' Luke 2(;; 39, 40.
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1874.]