Do you wonder at the high honor heaven conferred upon this aged prophetess, who “departed not night nor day from the Temple,” lest she should miss the opportunity of a lifetime, of making her the first woman to witness for Christ? It was in perfect keeping with God’s eternal plan of exalting the humble of this world who have loyal hearts. Rebekah, with cheerful alacrity, watered the ten camels of Eliezer, the servant of Abraham, when he called her to be the bride of Isaac; Rachel was driving her father’s sheep to the well in Haran when she won the heart of Jacob, the heir of promise; Miriam watched the little craft among the rushes of the Nile, before she led the women in triumphal song at the Red Sea; Ruth gleaned in the fields of Bethlehem to relieve her own and Naomi’s necessities, when she attracted the attention of Boaz; Esther lived a modest, retired life in the house of Mordecai, the porter at the royal palace, when she was called to be queen over the Persians. Poverty and homely toil are no hindrance to holy zeal in Christian service; nor are they hindrance to high communion with the Eternal. These are truths attested by revelation and by history. We are sometimes tempted to question humility as a stepping-stone to exaltation, and to complain of our lot; tempted to think ourselves hemmed in and circumscribed, thus to lack all opportunity for large service or large vision, or large attainments of any kind. Nothing is more common among those whose life is crowded with what is termed coarse and common toil, who are loaded down with many cares, and confined in what seem to them narrow bounds, to count others vastly more highly favored than themselves, and to regard themselves as out of range of all spiritual visions or special divine communications! Let her who is left to think such thoughts, or to place such estimate on her lot in life, remember that no eye of Scribe or Pharisee, of priest or king, saw or recognized the Son of God that day when Mary presented Jesus in the Temple. Such vision was reserved for the aged prophetess, who was looking for redemption in Jerusalem. What is the lesson? This, that the waiting and the morally qualified are the chosen channels of divine communication; that to such the revelations of God unfold wonderful visions. Heaven and earth meet where the truly devout are found watching “night and day” by the altars of prayer. If doxologies of the soul are to be rendered in the ear of mortals, they shall hear them whose hearts are open towards the throne of grace, and whose longings are for “redemption in Jerusalem!” and who are “waiting for the consolation of Israel.” CHAPTER VIII. Womanhood During our Lord’s Galilean Ministry.