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. B