of God can manifest itself; the wider its influence on
humanity. And the greater the Saint, that is, the nearer the Saint
approaches the perfection of God, to which he is called--Be ye therefore
perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect--the more influential he
must be; that is the more perfectly he will show the divine likeness and
transmit the divine influence. When we think of the power of the saints
as intercessors that is what actually we are thinking of,--the
perfection of their understanding of the mind of Christ.

But to return to this world and to the gathering in the temple on the
day of the Purification. These are they in whom the hope of Israel
rests. Israel is not a failure because it has brought forth these. God's
work through the centuries has not come to naught because in these
there is the possibility of a new beginning. The consummate flower of
Israel's life is the Blessed Mother through whom God becomes man; and
these who meet her in the temple are the representatives of those hidden
ones in Israel who will be the field wherein the seed of the Word can be
sown and where it will bring forth fruit an hundredfold. Jesus, this
Child, is God made man; and these around Him to-day, Mary and Joseph,
Simeon and Anna, are those who will receive His love and will show its
power in the universe forever.

And so it will remain always; the good ground wherein the seed may be
sown and bring forth unto eternal life is the spiritual nature of man,
made ready by humility and love,--"In quietness and confidence shall be
your strength." In the quietness that waits for God to act, the
confidence that knows that He will act when the time comes. It is well
if our aspiration is to be of the number of those who live lives hid
with Christ in God; who are seeking nothing but that the love of God may
be shed abroad in their hearts; who are "constrained" by nothing but the
love of Jesus. It is true that this simplicity of motive and aim will
bring it about that our lives will be hidden lives, lives of which the
world will take no note. We may be quite sure that none of the rulers of
Israel thought much about old Simeon who passed his time praying in the
temple. And if we want to be known of rulers it is doubtless a mistake
to take the road that Simeon followed. But the reward of that way was
that he saw "the Lord's Christ," that it was permitted him to take in
his arms Incarnate God, and then, in his rapture, to sing _Nunc
D