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.