Have you ever asked yourselves the question, "What do the spring flowers mean?" I have sometimes tried to fancy men gloomily riding to the city and sulkily pointing to the wealth of ephemeral beauty that has glorified the world, and demanding, "To what purpose is this waste?" There the flowers bloom, so fragile, so delicate, so short-lived; here to-day, and faded and gone to-morrow: to-day, a quivering point of beauty and fragrance, to-morrow touched by the withering finger of decay. And so "they bloom their hour and fade," and we say in wonder, "To what purpose was this waste?" What did it all mean? One sudden, genuine gush of sacred feeling; one burst of almost overpowering glory that shone steadfast for one brief hour and then faded into nothingness. Why lavish such wealth of colour and sweetness on fabrics so short-lived as the flowers of spring? Ah, why, indeed! Long years before man brake the first poor spikenard vessel of worship and adoring love at the feet of the Eternal, God poured His precious gifts of bloom and scent in bewildering profusion and prodigality upon the listless sons of earth.
I have sometimes wondered whether man might not have gone on conceiving of the world as no more than so much food, and clothing, and shelter, if God had not startled him by this annual miracle of spring to ask the question, "To what purpose is this waste?" Just so soon as man found himself appealed to in the higher faculties and senses, did he begin to suspect himself above the brute; did he begin to discover beneath the form of things a gracious and bountiful Spirit, whose attitude to him found voice in these tender and winsome words of Nature's lips.
Flowers "born to blush unseen and waste their sweetness on the desert air"—to what purpose are they? Surely, surely (as Mary's offering of sweet spikenard) they are God's approach to man, if only we would accept them as such. That is the inner meaning of this sudden gush of sacred feeling; that is the purpose of this "waste."
We are reaching, then, this conclusion, that if love is the soul of life, you must expect no mere dead level of respect, but occasional inevitable outbursts of feeling, love's sweet surprises; times when the ordinary prescribed channels through which habitual affection flows are inadequate, and when there must be room for the sweet extravagances of love. The strong, deep love of a father may no doubt be felt in the steadfast care that provides food and clothing, and shelter, and all things necessary for his child. But, after all, home would not be home if there were not room for the rarer gifts, and the moments of sublime abandon, when all the love of the heart breaks forth in unconstrained demonstration of affection.
Life that is love cannot be reduced to formalities; there must be a place in it for the spontaneous, the unpremeditated, the irresistible impulse. Love cannot live and thrive amid conventions merely. It has an etiquette of its own. It must be allowed to make its own proprieties. If you cannot appoint to it an object, and command one mortal to love another, neither can you prescribe the manner of its operation. You cannot control its whims, and freaks, and fancies. It has ten thousand devices that are all enigmas to the uninitiate.
"Love only knoweth whence they came, and comprehendeth love."
Its sanities are stark madness to the matter-of-fact man of affairs. He curtly denominates nonsense what to love is inspiration. He stares in blank incredulity at the simple and magnificent prodigalities of love, and begins to wonder whether he is himself quite sane to-day, and to ask in sheer stupor, "To what purpose is this waste?"
It would not do, perhaps, to make too searching a scrutiny into private personal histories, or it might transpire that, after all, behind even the most stolid of demeanours there lay experiences which memory treasures still, and which are the vindication to them of Mary's sublime extravagance. Yes, perhaps those you least suspect—the level-headed men who are feared for their hard thinking and steely, immovable stolidity, have secret drawers somewhere, with strangely unintelligible relics of a yesterday that was the greatest day of their life—and the least defensible day on any rationalistic view of it! On that day they lost either their head or their heart, or both, and love and reverence found expression; and the spikenard that they broke that day is the one precious memory in what people with unconscious irony are calling a successful career. Yes, the one thing they are proud to have done, the one thing they sometimes think may stand them in stead in a world where wealth and fame will be as nothing, is a thing which none could justify on commercial principles—which stands in conflict with the great aims and efforts of their lives—an action that sprang inevitably from a spendthrift love, and of which the world in which they move might well demand, "To what purpose is this waste?" I venture to say that by that very chapter of their history the possibility is proved that, some day, they may discover a more amazing loveliness and a more overpowering love; and may offer even nobler offerings of life and treasure at His feet, and go forth again, not in shame, but in holy pride and devout thanksgiving that at last they have learned to love with a love that counteth not the cost of sacrifice.
I have seen this exquisite story quoted as a defence of mere ritual. The method is obvious. The hardened lover of simplicity is represented as one of the disciples; and beholding the beauty of architecture, and the stateliness of the ceremonial, and listening to the superb eloquence of the liturgy and grandeur of the music, he asks, "To what purpose is this waste?"
There is a superficial justification for such teaching. But it is only superficial. For if from this incident it be attempted to establish a precedent for permanent elaborate ritual of worship, it must be said this incident goes to prove its impossibility. For ask yourselves, What gave this deed its peculiar and unrivalled power and influence? There is only one answer. It lies in its solitariness. It was spontaneous. It was unique. It could not bear repetition. To repeat it were to rob it of its bloom.