The Temple shows to better advantage at the beginning of the Gospel
history than at its close. As we follow our Lord through the events of
the last week, we meet no winsome faces within its precincts. Annas is
there, and Caiaphas; Pharisees too, blinded with envy; but there is no
Zacharias seen there, no Simeon, no doctors of the law even, such as
gathered around the Boy of twelve. If any successors of these still
frequented the sanctuary, they are lost in the deep shadow cast by a
nation's crime. Perhaps we may consider those whom we meet on the
threshold of our Lord's life as the last of an old regime of prophetic
souls, the last watchers passing out of sight as the twilight of a
coming doom thickened and settled on the Holy City.
But there he stands, the gracious, winsome old man, whom death is not
permitted to touch till the Star of Bethlehem has risen. "_It was
revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost that he should not see death before
he had seen the Lord's Christ_!" He is like a dweller of the spiritual
world, who only returns to visit earthly ways. For him the veil,
though not as yet rent, has worn thin, and he is more familiar with the
voices from beyond it than with the voices of earth. The priest, the
Levite, the Rabbi, pass him like shadows: the Holy Ghost is his living
companion and teacher. Browning's Rabbi ben Ezra might well have
borrowed his song from the lips of this aged saint:
"Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith, 'A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!'"
Consider his CHARACTER: "_the same man was just and devout_." Inward
and outward are in equipoise; he does not make frequent prayers atone
for equally frequent lapses in duty. He looks upon men in the light
which has risen upon him through looking upon God. He brought with
him, from the Throne of Grace, the tranquil beams which helped him to
perceive what he owed to his fellow-men. He was so subdued to charity,
that his one expectation was the consolation of Israel. He was no
prophet of doom; perhaps he was even blind to the moral deterioration,
the blight of ideals, growing more wasteful, every day, of the nation's
best life. To him, Israel was still more in need of consolation than
chastisement. Alas! for these gentle-souled patriots, whose hopes rise
from their own heart's goodness, and not from their nation's worth! So
obscure, so devout: while the great ones sin, they pray; while the
popular priests lead in worldliness, they retire into God's
hiding-places to intercede. They have private paths into God's
Paradise: they do not always see the cherubim with flaming sword. God
often calls them home before the stormy dawn of the evil day. So they
live and die, waiting for the consolation.
Consider, again, his HOLY FELLOWSHIP: "_the Holy Ghost was upon him_."
His heart became the ark of the Heavenly Dove, wandering over the grey
waters; and to him was the olive leaf brought. He looked past the face
of the Rabbi and the priest, not contemptuously, but wistfully,
wondering why he must: he looked past them, and beheld in the dawning
shadow a diviner Face. He heard secrets which would be foolishness to
others, even to frequenters of the Temple and to robed priests. He
thought of death peacefully; but that other Face always came, faintly
but immutably, between him and the Last Shadow. The Lord's Christ
first, death after. What gracious ways God has of treating some of
these simply-trusting children of His! How graciously He orders the
course of spiritual wants for them! "_And the evening and the
morning_" are--each day.
"_And he came by the Spirit into the Temple_." He required no
ecclesiastical calendar, no book of the hours. This obscure denizen of
the sanctuary had a dial in his own soul, and the silent shadow on the
figures came from no visible sun. Be sure that there are men and women
still, just, and fearing God, who anticipate the days of heaven, and
almost win their dawning. How often must Simeon have come, waiting:
and yet how fresh was his hope each time! He fed on God's
disappointments; the unfulfilled was his hidden manna.
Consider his ONE GREAT DAY. An obscure worshipper suddenly becomes the
richest, most honoured man in all the world: in his arms he holds God's
Incarnate Son. Yesterday was a day of earth, tomorrow also may well be
a day of earth: but this, a day of heaven! Alas! but only to him. To
others this, too, is a very day of earth. Did some officiating priest
watch the little group of peasant parents showing their first-born to
an obscure worshipper? And did he look, without a stain of contempt
upon his vision? And yet Jerusalem, Alexandria, Rome, had no such gift
and prize as the arms of that humble dreamer held. Who would not have
taken his place, had they known! It is well to be reckoned God's
intimate, lest we miss the Child.
"The sages frowned, their beards they shook,
For pride their heart beguiled;
They said, each looking on his book,
'We want no child.'"
But Simeon had dwelt nearer God than they--nearest God of all that came
to the Temple that day. And so God trusted him with His Best.
Then, once more, consider his PROPHETIC PRAYER. He was now ready to
depart. He had arrived at the house where the chamber of peace looks
towards the sunrising: why should he return to the warfare again? He
was unfitted for earth, by the face of that Child: he would go where
such a vision would not be marred by earthly airs! "_For mine eyes
have seen Thy salvation, which Thou hast prepared before the face of
all people: a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy
people Israel_." The sentinel has been long on duty: now the watch is
done, "_now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace_." And as he
passes from his well-kept post, his heart's charity overflows, and
Gentile and Jew are covered with his blessing: the Gentile even coming
first, as though, perhaps, he perceived that "the salvation of the Jews
could only be realised after the enlightenment of the heathen, and by
this means"--Godet suggests. To the darkened souls of the pagan
world--light: to the humiliated Jewish people--glory. Israel had seen
and lost many a glory: it had seen the glory of conquest, of wealth, of
wisdom, of ritual, of righteousness: but in the little Child was the
sum and essential radiancy of all glory that had been, the earnest of
all glory that was to be. Eternally, Christ is "_the hope of glory_."
Consider also his PERFECT CANDOUR. He looked in the Child's face, he
looked in the mother's face, with all the tenderness and love that made
it half divine; and then this disciple of the Spirit, strangely moved
from his wonted calm, described truth purely as he saw it. He scanned
the future, heard the sound of many a fall, caught the hiss and cry of
uneasy consciences against the "sign"; he saw the gleam of the sword,
and the wounded mother's heart; he saw the revelations of good and of
evil which the child would surely effect. One might not unnaturally
conclude that these presentiments were of the day--of that very hour.
He had hitherto walked and dwelt in the light of consolation; he had
dreamed his tranquil dream "_beside still waters_." But in this moment
of contact with God, he was made strong to see the darkness which is
never absent from the azure of truth--"a deep, but dazzling darkness."
So to young Samuel came the sorrowful vision of the fall of the house
of Eli; so to the old prophet-saint now glittered the gleaming arrows
of truth. But neither scorn nor wrathful eloquence moves him, in view
of what he saw: he simply accepts this burden of the Lord, and bears
it, without murmuring or exulting. He sees the "_fall and rising again
of many in Israel_"; it is God's will: let His will be done! "_A sword
shall pierce through thy own soul also_": bow, mother-heart, to the
purposes of God's heart of love! "_In peace_" this servant of the Lord
still stands; "_in peace_" he departs. Blessed are they whom darkling
truths may grieve, but not distract; whom stormy revelations beat upon,
but cannot shake. They live in the house founded upon a rock.
What presentiment of his nation's doom came to him in that moment of
clearer insight, of more candid intercourse with truth? "_The thoughts
of many hearts_"--"the uneasy working of the understanding in the
service of a bad heart":--how much was revealed, how much was
mercifully concealed? We cannot tell; but strength was given him to
bear the gleam of the vision, and still wait. "_O rest in the Lord;
wait patiently for Him_." He saw the Child go out of the Temple; and
if, for a moment, a breath as of a chill wind smote his soul, he
retired into the deeper consolations of God, where the sun smites not
by day, nor the moon by night. If it was his last visit to the Temple,
he had seen what would have made it worth his while to have gone there
every day for seventy years or more. And let it not be forgotten that
God still gives His Child to those who humbly, faithfully wait for the
consolation of Israel.
Such a picture as that of Simeon gives piety its divinest charm. It is
not simply that men have wished to be in his place; but--what is far
better and far more practical--they have wished to be in his spirit.
He draws them towards him, and after him. He stands in a glorious
company of winsome souls, who not only lead to heaven, but attract men
on the way.
"They are, indeed, our Pillar-fires
Seen as we go;
They are that City's shining spires,
We travel to:
A sword-like gleam
Kept man for sin
First out; this beam
Will guide him in."