if
you were knocking on a warming-pan--tin, tin, tin, tin, without any
intermission!"

Once a party of undergraduates laid an ambush for Simeon, intending to
assault him. He, however, by accident happened to go home that night
another way.

Not only had he to put up with active but also with much passive
opposition. But he went on in faith and charity, till his enemies
became his friends--his friends, his ardent and reverent admirers.

We must pass over without further comment a life of humility, love,
and holiness--a life full of good works at home, and ardently
interested in missions abroad.

In 1831, when Simeon was seventy-two years old, he preached his last
sermon before the university. The place was crowded. The heads
of houses, the doctors, the masters of art, the bachelors, the
undergraduates, the townsmen, all crowded to hear the venerable
preacher. They hung on his words and listened with the deepest
reverence.

His closing days were singularly bright and happy. Three weeks before
his death a friend, seeing him look more than usually calm and
peaceful, asked him what he was thinking of.

"I don't think now," he answered brightly; "I enjoy."

At another time his friends, believing the end was at hand, gathered
round him.

"You want to see," he remarked, "what is called a dying scene. That I
abhor.... I wish to be alone with my God, the lowest of the low."

One evening those watching beside him thought he was unconscious, his
eyes having been closed for some hours. But suddenly he remarked:--

"If you want to know what I am doing, go and look in the first chapter
of Ephesians from the third to the fourteenth verse; there you will
see what I am enjoying now."

On Sunday, 13th November, just as the bells of St. Mary's were calling
together the worshippers to service he passed away. He had accepted
an invitation to preach a course of four sermons, and would have
delivered the second of the course on that very afternoon. I am
permitted, by the kindness of the Rev. H.C.G. Moule, from whose
delightful biography the foregoing sketch has been compiled, to
reproduce a page from this address.

"Who would ever have thought I should behold such a day as this?"
wrote Simeon. "My parish sweetly harmonious, my whole works
stereotyping in twenty-one volumes, and my ministry not altogether
inefficient at the age of seventy-three.... But I love the valley of
humiliation."

In that last sentence, perhaps, lies