Had Mary not shed the precious balm upon his head, she would not have been reproved for the omission; yet the exaltation of love which so expressed itself was appreciated and honored by him.
It is written, too, that he looked upon and loved the young man who had not yet attained to the generous enthusiasm that is willing to sacrifice all for suffering humanity.
Religious offerings, to have value in his sight, must be like the gifts of lovers, not extorted by conscience, but by the divine necessity which finds relief in giving.
He can wait, as mothers do, till we outgrow our love of toys and come to feel the real sacredness and significance of life. The toy which is dear to childhood will be easily surrendered in the nobler years of maturity.
But Eva's was a nature so desirous of sympathy that whatever dwelt on her mind overflowed first or last into the minds of her friends; and, an evening or two after her visit to the mission home, she told the whole story at her fireside to Dr. Campbell, St. John, and Angie, Bolton, Jim, and Alice, who were all dining with her. Eva had two or three objects in this. In the first place, she wanted to touch the nerve of real Christian unity which she felt existed between the heart of St. John and that of every true Christian worker—that same Christian unity that associated the Puritan apostle Eliot with the Roman Catholic missionaries of Canada. She wished him to see in a Methodist minister the same faith, the same moral heroism which he had so warmly responded to in the ritualistic mission of St. George, and which was his moral ideal in his own work.
She wished to show Dr. Campbell the pure and simple faith in God and prayer by which so effective a work of humanity had already been done for a class so hopeless.
"It's all very well," he said, "and I'm glad, if anybody can do it; but I don't believe prayer has anything to do with it."
"Well, I do," said Bolton, energetically. "I wouldn't think life worth having another minute, if I didn't think there was a God who would stand by a man whose whole life was devoted to work like this."
"Well," said Campbell, "it isn't, after all, an appeal to God; it's an appeal to human nature. Nobody that has a heart in him can see such a work doing and not want to help it. Your minister takes one and another to see his Home, and says nothing, and, by-and-by, the money comes in."