Yet Mary and Joseph were not the only worshippers in the Temple that day--there was a Human Soul worshipping God as He had never been worshipped before. The Heart of Jesus now so near the end of the first stage of Its existence on earth was offering to God all Its homage and all Its love, offering to Him all the work that had been done during the nine months passed in the holy "Ark of the Covenant," all the humiliation and self-abasement, the silence and dependence, the suffering and patience, the satisfaction and merit. He had been doing all the time the things that pleased His Father, the things that He had made Himself man to be able to do. Now He is waiting--and the very waiting is another Act of worship--waiting for the moment to come when He can take the next step in His earthly journey, waiting with His Mother whose intense desire is only second to His Own. O Emmanuel! God with us! I feel that I must go too to Thy Sacred Courts to-day and make one more worshipper before that Holy Shrine. Advent is nearly over, my time of preparation is well-nigh at an end. What have I to offer as I kneel in adoration? Feeble desires, broken resolutions, failure again in the thing I did so want not to fail in this Advent, good intentions, but little else. Dare I come and kneel there where all is so holy and so perfect? Yes, for He is _Emmanuel_, God incarnate for me. Let me hand Him through His Mother all my poverty and wretchedness and weakness and failure, together with my contrition and repentance and love, and in exchange He will hand me His forgiveness and the promise to offer my inadequate worship, together with His own Divine perfections, to His Father, Who will be satisfied. This is what _Emmanuel_ means. POINT II. OUR LAWGIVER. "The Lord is our Judge, the Lord is our Lawgiver, the Lord is our King He will save us." (Is. XXXIII. 22). He is our King, therefore He has a right to make laws for us. And who could be a better Judge of how the laws are kept than He Who made them? Am I afraid at the sterner aspect which things seem to have taken? There is no need, for He is still our _Emmanuel_, but He can only be thus our Friend and Companion by being also the One Who has an absolute right to make laws for us and to expect our obedience. "You are My _friends_, if you do the things I command you" (St. John XV. 14). The reason for _all_ His titles is that He wills to _save_ us. He is first of all the Saviour and then, in order that our salvation may be accomplished, He makes Himself our King, our Lawgiver and finally our Judge. "If you love Me, keep My commandments." Such is our Lawgiver's appeal. Surely His commandments are not grievous. He Who did always the things which pleased His Father, asks us to try to do the same.