BY REV. H. ELVET LEWIS


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: