Then, once more, consider his PROPHETIC PRAYER.  He was now ready to depart.  He had arrived at the house where the chamber of peace looks towards the sunrising:  why should he return to the warfare again?  He was unfitted for earth, by the face of that Child:  he would go where such a vision would not be marred by earthly airs! “For mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, which Thou hast prepared before the face of all people:  a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel.”  The sentinel has been long on duty:  now the watch is done, “now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace.”  And as he passes from his well-kept post, his heart’s charity overflows, and Gentile and Jew are covered with his blessing:  the Gentile even coming first, as though, perhaps, he perceived that “the salvation of the Jews could only be realised after the enlightenment of the heathen, and by this means”—­Godet suggests.  To the darkened souls of the pagan world—­light:  to the humiliated Jewish people—­glory.  Israel had seen and lost many a glory:  it had seen the glory of conquest, of wealth, of wisdom, of ritual, of righteousness:  but in the little Child was the sum and essential radiancy of all glory that had been, the earnest of all glory that was to be.  Eternally, Christ is “the hope of glory.”

Consider also his PERFECT CANDOUR.  He looked in the Child’s face, he looked in the mother’s face, with all the tenderness and love that made it half divine; and then this disciple of the Spirit, strangely moved from his wonted calm, described truth purely as he saw it.  He scanned the future, heard the sound of many a fall, caught the hiss and cry of uneasy consciences against the “sign”; he saw the gleam of the sword, and the wounded mother’s heart; he saw the revelations of good and of evil which the child would surely effect.  One might not unnaturally conclude that these presentiments were of the day—­of that very hour.  He had hitherto walked and dwelt in the light of consolation; he had dreamed his tranquil dream “beside still waters.”  But in this moment of contact with God, he was made strong to see the darkness which is never absent from the azure of truth—­“a deep, but dazzling darkness.”  So to young Samuel came the sorrowful vision of the fall of the house of Eli; so to the old prophet-saint now glittered the gleaming arrows of truth.  But neither scorn nor wrathful eloquence moves him, in view of what he saw:  he simply accepts this burden of the Lord, and bears it, without murmuring or exulting.  He sees the “fall and rising again of many in Israel”; it is God’s will:  let His will be done! “A sword shall pierce through thy own soul also”:  bow, mother-heart, to the purposes of God’s heart of love! “In peace” this servant of the Lord still stands; “in peace” he departs.  Blessed are they whom darkling truths may grieve, but not distract; whom stormy revelations beat upon, but cannot shake.  They live in the house founded upon a rock.