Pauls's Epistle to the Ephesians
CHAPTER XXI.
THE FILIAL RELATION—DUTY OF CHILDEEN TO PARENTS.
"Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honour thy father and mother (which is the first commandment with promise), that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth."- EPH. 5:1-3. (Dt. v. 16; Col. 3:20.)

THE duty which children owe to their parents is expressed in two words -"obey" and "honour." I use them as convertible terms. To obey is really to "listen to" to hear submissively and deferentially; to respect their utterances; to "honour" them. The duty is enforced by three considerations. It is right. It is commanded. And it has connected with the commandment a promise.

I. It is right. In the nature of things, it is just and proper. The appeal is made to reason here; to our natural sense of justice and propriety. Apart from all other arguments or motives on its side, the thing itself is right.

So clearly and self-evidently is it right, that the Lord appeals to it in pleading with his people, and remonstrating against their inexcusable undutifulness and unfaithfulness. "A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master: if then I be a father, where is mine honour, and if I be a master, where is my fear?"

"A son honoureth his father." It is natural, it is fitting, it is just and right, that he should. It is his duty; and his reasonable duty; so much so, that if he violate or wilfully neglect it, he is counted a monster rather than a man. The ties which bind you to your parents are so numerous, so strong, so tender, that even when God breaks them, it is a wound grievous to be borne; and nothing but the most wild or wanton hardness of heart can be imagined as an explanation of your wilfully breaking them yourselves. To be a grief to your father and a bitterness to her that bare you; to requite with ingratitude those who fondly cared for your infant helplessness and supplied your infant wants; to disappoint the bright hopes that cheered their spirits in many an hour of anxious thought and midnight watching; to set at naught an authority never exercised but for your good, and resent salutary chastisement never inflicted but with deepest pain and pity; to forget their counsels of wisdom, their lessons of love, their earnest warnings and persuasive pleadings; to be deaf to the voice of a father's fervent prayer, and the eloquence of a mother's silent tear; to despise the Holy Book they have put into your hands, showing you how over it to bend the knee; to grieve them by your waywardness, or by your sins pierce their souls with many sorrows; - such conduct is so manifestly opposed even to the natural sense and feeling of mankind, and their instinctive apprehension of what is right, that all cry shame on one so abandoned; and leave him, without sympathy, to the remorse with which his conscience, however seared, and his heart, however hardened, must soon be.

When the Lord then, as the father of his people, makes this plea his own; surely his remonstrance may well strike home upon the best feelings of your nature, and awaken one of its truest and tenderest chords. "A son honoureth his father. If I be your father, where is my honour?" Ye fathers in Israel, would you be content to receive such honour from your children as you yourselves are rendering to your God? And, ye children, would you count it enough to show to your parents the kind and measure of regard that you show to your God - to give to your father on earth as little of your heart as your conscience testifies that you are giving to your Father in heaven?

II. But, secondly, the duty is commanded. The argument is here to be reversed. It is not from man to God, but from God to man. For though, in one view, the duty of honouring your earthly parents may be made the test of a duty infinitely higher, in a far more important view the order must be changed. Even in regard to the former duty, your natural estimate is apt to fall far short of the truth. Such as it is, it may be used to convince you of your utter and inexcusable failure in the other duty of rendering to God the honour and obedience you owe to him. But when that sad fact has been realised by your conscience, quickened by the Holy Spirit; and when, led by the Spirit, you have been moved and enabled to repent of your deep estrangement from God, and to seek and find reconciliation, to him in his Son; when, pardoned through that Son's blood, and accepted in him, the Beloved, you become sons of God in him, and receive the Spirit of his Son in you, crying, Abba, Father; when thus you really honour God as your Father in heaven; then, returning to your earthly parents - and that sense of your obligation to them which may have, in the first instance, set you upon thinking of your duty to God - you return with a new sense of the deep holiness and exceeding breadth of your obligation to honour your father and your mother in the Lord; not only because this is right;"but because it is right as being a commandment. It is a duty, and a commanded duty. "Honour thy father and thy mother, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee."

This view of its being not merely a duty, but a commanded duty, materially affects both the motive and the extent of the obligation to honour your father and your mother in the Lord.

1. The motive must be holy. It is a pure and holy respect to the will of God. In that view, "this is right." On that footing alone should the parent base his parental authority; on the footing, I mean, of the rightful authority of God. For in his hands it is a delegated authority. He claims obedience "in the Lord." And therefore he claims it as "right;" as a right thing, because the Lord has made it matter of commandment. He may try to rule his child otherwise: by force, by flattery, or by fraud. Reason also may be brought in to show the propriety and expediency of submission. And the affections may be engaged on the same side. In infancy and early childhood, he may have to begin by asserting, as best he can, his own will as supreme, and enforcing it as from himself. But the sooner he claims obedience as obedience "in the Lord," and as on that account "right," the better for his hope of wielding his authority effectually for good. And the sooner a child begins to obey his parents in the Lord, because it is right, as being commanded, the better for his standing well with them, and getting good from them. There may be other reasons and other motives for his doing so. He may find it to be his interest; or a sense of decency, and the habit of submission, may constrain him; or admiration and gratitude may move him. Nay, he may think it a finer thing to obey his parents from the spontaneous promptings of his own warm heart, than to obey them by compulsion and on command; to obey them in the Lord; because it is right in the Lord's sight. But let him not so deceive himself. He does not obey his parents at all, unless it is in the Lord, and because it is right, that he obeys them.

For it is the Lord who, by subduing you to himself, renders you, in himself, submissive to your parents, as he was himself. He makes your submission to them part and parcel of your submission to him. It comes to be submission of the same sort; obedience divested of all the bitterness and irksomeness of merely legal enforcement; obedience on the higher platform on which free and sovereign grace places you; obedience partaking of that cordiality, that free and joyous sense of free and honourable obligation, that high and tender love that must have breathed through all his own personal obedience to Mary and Joseph, when he was subject to them at Nazareth; and still more through all his personal and official obedience to his Father in heaven: "I must be about my Father's business" "Father, thy will be done" "Father, not as I will, but as thou willest;" "My meat is to do my Father's will, and finish his work;" "The cup which my Father giveth me, shall I not drink it?"

2. The extent also as well as the motive of the duty is affected by the footing on which it is thus placed, as being not only right, but commanded. Of Jesus himself, in his home-relation to Mary and Joseph, it is said without qualification or reserve "he was subject to them." He thus kept the commandment of God. And the commandment which he thus kept is very broad. It is strongly and unequivocally asserted and enforced as such all through the Old Testament Scriptures. And in the nature of the case it must be so. If indeed your filial duty rested on any other foundation, it might admit of modifying or explanatory qualifications. If it rested on a mere sense of natural fitness or propriety, that might seem to point in a quite opposite direction. Is it right or fitting for a wise son to defer to an imbecile or unworthy parent ? If it rested on gratitude or natural affection, how easily might the parental claim be viewed as forfeited, to the extent at least of some large abatement from its full force and integrity?

How strong, in point of fact, is the tendency, as you who have been children grow up to maturity, to deal thus with your filial obligations! You do not intend to dishonour your parents; nor do you in reality behave towards them with anything like studied disrespect or disobedience. But alas, you fail in too many daily instances, and you secretly palliate your failure. You omit some attention that would have pleased your father, or you yield to some levity that vexes him. He does not appear to notice any neglect. No great harm is done. Or you are provoked by his treatment of you. You think yourself harshly used in some slight particular. Your temper is ruffled; your looks are sullen. But you are excusable; he rather than you is to be blamed. You begin to cast off your old feelings of reverence and dependence, and to presume upon your superior enlightenment and enlargement of mind; so as not merely to urge your own views against his, but to do so with unseemly arrogance and presumption. And for all that you have a good deal to plead.

For indeed, according to any principle of mere natural reason or natural affection, it is not easy, in such circumstances, to bring home to you, on the ground of such instances as these, any very poignant sense of guilt. For you readily persuade yourselves that if you do not honour your father and your mother now with that unquestioning and unreflecting and all-confiding homage with which once you reverenced them, it is they and not you who are changed; or at least they are changed to you and you to them. Neither they nor you may be blameworthy. The change is accidental or inevitable. Eeason and affection can scarcely either prevent it or reprove it. Ah! It is only when you come to know your parents, not after the flesh, but in the Lord; when thus you come to honour them, not from any variable considerations of natural feeling, but from a regard to the Lord; it is then only that you honour them consistently, constantly, "in all things." For then, in all your treatment of them, you consider yourselves as dealing first and primarily with the Lord; not with them, but with him; and with them only in him. What a holy fervour should this thought inspire into all your filial piety! How should it rebuke all eye-service; all irritability; all resentment of what may seem vexatious interference! How should it make you recognise the obligation in all its breadth - Children, obey your parents "in all things." From all this it follows, first, that the duty which children owe to their parents is altogether independent of the character and qualifications of the parents, and of the opinion which the children may have of them.

Are your parents unfit for their high and holy charge, or unworthy of it? Have they failed to secure your confidence and esteem? Have you outgrown your first instinct of blind affection? Have you reached a higher spiritual position than they seem to occupy? You are more alive than once you were to the real dignity of the parental relation. You see more clearly what a Christian parent might be, and ought to be. You feel what kind of Christian parent would now content you. If you had your own choice, you would not select the father or the mother you now have. It is a sad discovery. To be forced, on principles strange in their view, to judge unfavourably your earliest and dearest friends, to see defects and faults in those whose actions once seemed to be all exemplary, whose every word was an oracle; to detect folly or falsehood in a father once regarded as infallible, or a mother deemed to be without a stain; - ah, it is a case in which one might be tempted to say that ignorance is bliss! A believing child may almost shrink from recognising his own faith, if it compels him thus to recognise his parents' unbelief!

But look, thou son or daughter, called in an ungodly or worldly household to be the Lord's - look not to your parents as deserving honour, but to the Lord as commanding honour to be given to them. You never in that view can lose your reverence and respect for any father or mother, however far from God themselves, so long as you feel that it is not they, but that God to whom you have been brought nigh, who really claims and calls forth this tribute of regard. You may sometimes be at a loss to know how your honouring your parents should be manifested; how it may be harmonised with higher obligations. You may have to take steps displeasing to them, and stand out against what they would prefer. Still you will feel that all the more, for that very reason, all possible deference is due to them "in the Lord." On his account you will honour them; "bearing all things; believing all things; hoping all things; enduring all things" if by any means, for your sake, they may be brought themselves to honour him, for whose sake, as they must see, you so dutifully honour them.

Are your parents, on the other hand, all that your hearts could wish? Are they like-minded with you, "partakers of the blessing"? To honour them is surely an easy duty. But be sure that you honour and obey them as your parents in the Lord. It is not enough that you honour them as all believers honour one another. Your parents, though they are your fellow Christians, are still your parents. Nay, they must be felt to be so all the more on that very account. Do not then at any time, or in any instance, forget to reverence them as parents, because it is your privilege to love them as brethren in the Lord. Use no unseemly familiarity. Take no undue liberties. Assume no air or attitude of independence. But while you live with them in the confidence and communion of brotherly kindness, as being of the same household of faith, obey them in the Lord; honour them as your father and mother, because the Lord your God has commanded you.

Hence again, secondly, the extent of the filial obligation is to be urged. Thus, as children obeying your parents, you are to obey them "in all things." Yes, "in all things." There is no exception or reservation; save only that implied in the overbearing and all-dominating principle ; " we must obey God rather than man."

There are a few cases under the milder and more tolerant assertion of parental authority as against the conscientious convictions of children that has now taken the place of a sterner domestic rule - still there are cases with reference to worldly entanglements, in which you must be true to God, in spite of apparent disloyalty or disaffection to your father or mother. I say apparent. For it is only apparent. Even these hard questions do not exempt you from the duty of honouring your parents in the very matters in which you are compelled to decline their jurisdiction; and honouring them all the more because of that compulsion. You will meekly receive their censure; you will explain to them affectionately and tenderly the views on which you act; you will yield to them a double homage in all other things; you will pray for them always. You will remember the example of the Lord Jesus, who did indeed in one instance set aside his mother's interference in a matter that pertained to his Father's kingdom; whose first miracle, however, was at that very time wrought in compliance with his mother's hint; whose all but latest breath on the cross was spent in commending her to the disciple whom he loved.

The views which Paul suggests of parental claim and filial duty may seem to impart to the relation too awful a character. Who may venture, on these terms, to call himself a pious son? Even according to natural sense and feeling, it is a bitter pang to recall years of intercourse with a father or mother, long since, it may be, withdrawn from your embrace! "Who can stand the knell of that deep sigh which seems to whisper in the child's dreaming startled ear a parent's buried wounds? They were silent long. But now they have a voice and utterance, reaching the inmost soul! "What would you not give for one brief hour to have them all explained, to give a fresh pledge of love such as you never knew you felt till now? And how is all this yearning aggravated if grace has come in to concur with nature in giving your parents a right over you! How must the recollection of them, as passed into rest and glory, cut you to the heart, as you deeply feel your unworthy treatment of them when they were with you here below! What were they to you? What were you to them? Is it, however, through God's good providence, otherwise with you? Are your parents still spared? Does the old man your father yet live? Ah, it may be well now to be anticipating the time of separation, and to be asking yourselves how your conduct towards him will appear when he is taken away from you, or you are taken away from him. Look forward to the hour when he and you must part. The parting will be in itself hard enough to bear. Let it not be made harder by anything now in your intercourse with one another, on which you will then have to cast back a self-accusing eye. Let all your prayers, and services, and offices of filial love and duty, be such as may soothe the spirits of your parents while they live, and, by God's blessing, minister comfort to you when they have gone to their long home : the comfortable hope of being again reunited, where separation and sorrow and sin are known no more.

III. There is yet a third consideration by which this duty is enforced. It has connected with it a promise -" Honour thy father and mother (which is the first commandment with promise), that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth." The mention of this being the "first commandment with promise," might naturally suggest the idea of there being other subsequent commandments with promise in the decalogue. But there are none. We are thrown back therefore on the preceding portion of that code. There has been no commandment with promise, however, before this one. There have been simply reasons annexed, or grounds of obligation stated.

Thus, the first commandment is based on the absolute sovereignty of Jehovah and his special relation to his redeemed, as asserted in what is called the preface to the whole ten; -which, however, I take to be part and parcel of the first. The second, again, rests on the character of God; on his holy jealousy for the honour of his name. The third is enforced by an appeal to his principle of j'udgment being after a higher standard than that of man. While the fourth brings forward the gracious example of the Sabbatic rest of God, to be a defence at once and a warrant for the Sabbath as made for man. But the fifth is the first command,ment with promise.

To ascertain the full import of this significant fact, let the meaning and position of that commandment be noted.
1. As regards its meaning, I cannot but think that it is too widely stretched in our Shorter Catechism, where it is made to embrace all the relations of social life. I entirely concur in the principles of interpretation laid down in our Larger Catechism (99) as applicable to the ten commandments; and especially in the sixth of these principles ; " that under one sin or duty, all of the same kind are forbidden or commanded." We must apply the prohibition or precept to all cases that are analogous to the case formerly specified, -that fairly fall under the same category. Thus the order " honour thy father and thy mother," may be held to cover all relations of inferior to superior; all relations implying obligation under authority; such as that of a subject to his sovereign ; or a pupil to his guardian ; or even a servant to his master. But it is an unwarrantable extension of the principle to make the commandment embrace the relation of equal to equal; or that of superior to inferior.

2. The mistake probably arose out of a wrong position being assigned to the fifth commandment, in the division of the decalogue. It was held to stand at the head of the second Table, and to have in itself, accordingly, in germ or embryo, all the duties which men owe to one another. But is that its right position ? I scarcely think so. For if, as is commonly understood, the division of the decalogue into two parts rests on its having its summary in the two great commandments, the assigning of its place to the fifth commandment is a matter of some difficulty.

There have indeed been many principles and methods proposed and practised in this dichotomy; this cutting of the law in twain, to suit the two divinely-written tables, holograph of Jehovah himself. But none can stand comparison, in point of fitness, with the one which rests on the twofold law of love. Is it clear, however, as is generally assumed, that this division gives four commandments to the first Table, and six to the second ? Does the fifth commandment fall under the rule of equal and reciprocal love 1 Is it not rather allied to that which reigns in the first of the two great requirements of love ? Does it not partake of its character and breathe its spirit 1 Is it not a sort of extension of the law of love, as applicable to God in heaven, to those who are in a sense his representatives and deputies on earth; clothing human parents with something like the majesty of him who alone is to be supremely loved.

3. If this be so, then possibly a closer analogy of resemblance, in point of structure, than is sometimes thought of, may be traced between the two tables of the decalogue. In both, alike we have four commandments, quite homogeneous in their character; forming a complete code of duty as regards the matter in hand; and then a fifth, supplemental, as it were, to the previous four, in the way of interpreting or applying them spiritually and practically.

Thus, take in this view the second table, treating of our duty to man ; to man considered as our neighbour ; entitled to be treated by us as we would think it right that we should ourselves be treated by him. In four of the commandments (6, 7, 8, 9) we have provision made for his life, his purity or perfection, his property, his reputation or good name. "We are to see to it that, so far as we are concerned, in all our intercourse, with him, he is regarded (1) simply as a living man; (2) as a living man, not marred, mutilated, maimed, corrupted, but complete, in his true, unsullied, uninvaded manhood; (3) as entitled to what he wins or gets of the means of livelihood as his own; and (4) as entitled to claim true recognition of himself as he really is at the mouth of all his fellows. I may not (1) take his life away ; nor (2) snatch from it its native purity and beauty; nor (3) intercept the well-earned or justly-gifted supply for its sustenance ; nor (4) brand it with any stain of calumny and ill-report. These four precepts seem to exhaust the list of what we are forbidden to do, in this second table. But now comes in a fifth (the 10th); not enacting an additional prohibition, but imparting new life to all the preceding four. For it comprehends them all; killing, corrupting, stealing, lying ; all these ways of injuring our neighbour; in his house, his wife, his servant, his cattle; in anything that is his. And by the use of the term " covet," it lifts the whole up from the region of the outer life to the inner region of thought and feeling; from what a man does, as regards his brother, to what in his inmost heart he thinks, and wishes, and desires.

Take now the first table of the law, or the first four commandments usually regarded as contained in it. What do they assert?
1. Jehovah lives: to have other gods before him is to destroy his life
2. He is pure spirit: to worship him by idols is to carnalise his nature.
3. He has a name or character among his creatures : to profane it is to rob him of his property. 4. He witnesses of himself in his Sabbath of rest from work: to work on the Sabbath is to bear false witness of him. To own him as the one living and true God : to worship him as a spirit, in spirit and in truth : to give him what he has a right to claim, a sacred recognition of his name : to bear true witness for him and with him by resting on the Sabbath as he rested; these are the requirements of the first four commandments.

And now, what of the fifth ? Does it usher in the commandments that come under the head of Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself ? Is that all that it enjoins 1 Does it not rather come in as a corollary from the first four? Is it not an extension, and earthly application, of the heavenly and divine, the first and great commandment, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 1 And in that view, as a supplement or appendix to the first table, does it not harmonise with the tenth precept, as the summing up and spiritualising of the second ? For one thing, to honour is equivalent to not coveting; as not to covet implies honouring. The one is the positive way of putting it; the other is the negative. And as in the tenth commandment, the negative, Do not covet, lifts the whole of our duty to man out of the region of the seen and palpable into the region of the unseen and the spiritual; so, in the fifth, the positive, Thou shalt honour, brings the whole of our duty to God down from the region of the remote and the heavenly to the sphere of our common life. Nor, in this view, would I object to the widest extension of the fifth commandment, so as to embrace all men universally ; provided only it is kept to its own proper meaning of honouring, respecting, reverencing. For thus, through the command to bring somewhat of the homage we owe to God into the obedience we owe to our parents, we reach, by a thoroughly legitimate inference, a farther application of the precept to our neighbours generally. And we come to see that in measure, and in proportion to the positions which they occupy, first our parents, and then all connected with us by any ties, are entitled to claim at our hands a love of honour and submission partaking of the nature of the love which we are bound to render to God.

Thus the two commandments, the tenth and the fifth, suitably crown their respective tables in the divinely-written decalogue; and fit into one another so as to make of them one whole. The one, the tenth, raises earthly relations upwards to the sphere of what is spiritual, and therefore heavenly. The other, the fifth, brings the heavenly to bear upon the earthly.

4. It is its positive form which gives it that singular preeminence. For it is the first commandment that is, or indeed could be, positive. And there is no other like it, in that respect, afterwards. " Honour," is the word; not " Thou shalt not;" not even, as in the fourth commandment, " Thou shalt not" -coming in after "Remember:" the negative defining the positive ; but, pure and simple, it is the command " Honour." Where could this purely and simply positive precept have place except where we find it ? -turning all the prohibitive commandments, as regards God, into the one positive or direct form in which they can be realised on earth; the form of a code, which, though necessarily at first, and indeed all throughout, saying, " Thou shalt not," yet ultimately, through its taking the shape of " Thou shalt not covet," conies really to be identical with " Thou shalt love or honour."

5. Is it not thus, through its being the first commandment of precept, that it is the first commandment with promise. A promise cannot well be annexed to a merely negative commandment. The formula, " Thou shalt not," is that of threatening rather than that of promising. The Lord must begin with that formula. He must assert his self-existence, his holiness, his faithfulness and truth; under the sanction, not of a promise, but of a threat. But, may I say, he longs for the opportunity of making the whole matter turn on a different arrangement ? -he longs to be a promiser ? And he finds that he can be so first in the fifth commandment. There, therefore, for the first time, he can bring in the element of a gracious reward. He can do so, even as when he closed his parable long afterwards with a promise grounded on the principle : " Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of my brethren, ye did it unto me." Honour thy father, with loving honour; for my sake, and as thou lovest me ! "

6. The nature of the promise may confirm and explain these views ; " That thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee ;" " That thy days may be prolonged, and that it may be well with thee, in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee ; " or as here, " That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth." It is "a promise of long life and prosperity," as our catechism puts it, "to all such as keep this commandment." Prosperity ! Of what sort ? Outward prosperity 1 Yes ; perhaps it way be outward prosperity, with the reservation; " so far as it shall serve for God's glory and their own good." But it is better explained, both in the Old Testament and in the New. In the Old Testament, we have the Lord's assurance to the man who sets his love upon him, " With long life will I satisfy him, and show him my salvation." In the New Testament, we have the "Nunc dimittis" of aged Simeon, satisfied with length of days; "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." That is the prosperity; " to see the salvation of the Lord." And that also is the length of days. To have seen the salvation of the Lord is to be satisfied with long life, or length of days. These days may be few according to the reckoning of time, or they may be many. But, be they few or many, the promise of long life is fulfilled when mine eyes have seen thy salvation. I am satisfied, 0 Lord. I am satisfied with length of days. Now, in the very morning of life, I can say, " Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word."

Surely such a promise, so interpreted by the word of God himself, befits the precept to which it is annexed, in its widest and most comprehensive acceptation. There is a blessed connection and harmony between them. Who that ' sets his love on God, honouring him with loving honour, and with like honour in the Lord honouring his father and mother, and all with whom through them he is united and of one blood, would care for any other sort of prosperity, -any other sort of length of days than this!

Ye who set your hearts on long life and prosperity of a different sort, consider how impossible it is, in the very nature of things as well as by the word of God, that the promise can be fulfilled to you ! You may live long, and it may be well with you in a sense. You may be reaching the measure of the threescore or fourscore years allotted to the earthly life of man ; and all along their prosperous course fortune may have smiled upon you. You may have heaped up riches, and fared sumptuously every day. And it may have seemed even as if, by some special providence, you were exempted from the ills to which flesh is heir. But are you satisfied with long life? Can you truly sing the "Nunc dimittis" ? Are you ready to depart in peace ?

See, on the other hand, yonder meek, pale face, -that emaciated form, -limbs it may be, racked with pain, -a wan and weary longing for rest ever and anon stealing over the cold and clammy brow ! It is but a child, of the age perhaps of Jesus when he first went into the temple on earth, a child waiting to be led by Jesus into a better house above. He began, with the earliest opening of his mind and heart, to honour his father and his mother. Through their teaching, he learned to honour them with a loving honour, in the Lord; to honour his parents as Jesus honoured his. Early has he got his reward. Graciously, gloriously has the promise been fulfilled. The Lord, even Jesus, has showed him his salvation. And that bright radiant smile, as he falls asleep, speaks only of satisfaction like old Simeon's as the Lord lets him depart in peace.
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