The secret of life is found when the bitterness of myrrh is turned to sweetness in the discovery that the outcome of the sacrificial life is not that it be narrowed but enlarged; and that for the life which we have entrusted to Him God will do more than we ask or think.  When our will becomes one with the will of God we are surprised to find that we have ceased to think of what we once called our sacrifices, because life in Christ reveals itself to us as of infinite joy and richness, so that we forget the things that are behind and gladly press on.

Queen of heaven, blessed may thou be
For Godes Son born He was of thee,
For to make us free. 

          Gloria Tibi, Domine.

Jesu, Godes Son, born He was
In a crib with hay and grass,
And died for us upon the cross. 

            Gloria Tibi, Dominie.

To our Lady make we our moan,
That she may pray to her dear Son,
That we may to His bliss come. 

          Gloria Tibi, Dominie.

Sixteenth Century.

PART TWO

CHAPTER IX

THE PRESENTATION

And when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished, they brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord.

S. Luke II. 22.

O come let us worship the Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Ghost,—­we the Christian nations, for He is our true God.

And we hope in Holy Mary, that God will have mercy upon us through her prayers.

Hail to thee, Mary, the fair dove, who hath borne for us God the Word.

     COPTIC

The reading of a story in the Gospels is often like looking through a window down some long arcade; there is in the foreground the group of actors in whom we are presently interested, and beyond them is the whole background of contemporary life to which they belong, of which they are a part.  If we have time to think out the meaning of this surrounding life we gain added insight into the meaning of our principal characters.  It is so now as we watch this group of humble peasant folk coming up to the temple to fulfil the demands of the law of Moses.  In the precincts of the temple they are merged in a larger group whose interests are clearly identical with their own, and whom we easily see to be the local representatives of a party—­the name, no doubt, suggests an organisation which they had not—­scattered throughout Judea.  Their interest was the redemption of Israel.  They were the true heirs of the prophets, and among them the prophecies which concerned the Lord’s Christ were the subject of constant study and meditation.  Amid the movements and intrigues of political and religious parties, they abode quietly in the temple, as Simeon and Anna, or in their homes, as Zacharias and Elizabeth, waiting.  Their power was the silent power of sanctity, the power that flows from lives steeped in meditation and prayer.  They constitute that remnant which is the depository of the hopes of Israel and the saving salt which prevents the utter putrefaction of the body of the nation.