3. And being in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster-box of ointment of spikenard, very precious; and she brake the box, and poured it on his head. 4. And there were some that had indignation within themselves, and said, Why was this waste of the ointment made? 5. For it might have been sold for more than three hundred pence, and have been given to the poor. And they murmured against her. 6. And Jesus said, Let her alone; why trouble ye her? she hath wrought a good work on me. 7. For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have not always. 8. She hath done what she could: she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying. 9. Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her. I HAVE been led of late to think that a short course of Sermons, explaining the principles which underlie our Cathedral Establishments, and the functions which A they are designed to discharge towards the Church, might at the present juncture awaken some interest, and (under God's good blessing) be of some use. That an attack upon our Established Church is impending, and that when it will come is only a question of time, our recent experience leaves us unhappily little room to doubt; and in the judgment even of some who are esteemed among the Church's best friends, the Cathedrals are her most vulnerable point. Accordingly, various schemes are afloat for mercilessly pulling these old institutions into shapes more consistent with modern ideas of usefulness, all having this common feature that they assume the Cathedrals to have no distinct place or work of their own, but to be merely a certain reserve of men and money, which may conveniently be used to stop one or more of the manifold gaps which are continually opening themselves out in the regular parochial system of the Church. "Imperious Cæsar, dead, and turned to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away;" and now that the keen east wind of trial is sweeping through and searching every cranny of our Church, men think that those grand monuments of medieval devotion, the Cathedrals, having died a fiatural death, may best be turned to practical account by being thrust, however |