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 the secret of the man's far-reaching and undying influence.
A SOLDIER MISSIONARY.
THE STORY OF HEDLEY VICARS.
It was the 22nd March, 1855, just outside Sebastopol. The night was dark and gusty. Close to the Russian entrenchments was an advanced post of the British forces, commanded by Captain Hedley Vicars. Fifteen thousand Russians under cover of the gloom had come out from Sebastopol and driven our French allies out of their advanced trenches. Then a portion of this force stealthily advanced, seeking to take the British by surprise.