them.' Ah, Peter! you were getting on very thin ice when you talked
about denial. Perhaps it was just because he remembered his sin in
the judgment hall that he used that word to express the very utmost
degree of degeneration and departure from Jesus. But be that as it
may, he bases the slave-owner's right on purchase. And Jesus Christ
has bought us by His own precious blood; and so all that sounds
harsh in the metaphor, worked out as I have been trying to do,
changes its aspect when we think of the method by which He has
acquired His rights and the purpose for which He exercises them. As
the Psalmist said, 'Oh, Lord! truly I am Thy slave. Thou hast loosed
my bonds.'

III. So, lastly, we have here the saint recognising and welcoming
the approach of death.

Now, it is a very singular thing, but I suppose it is true, that
somehow or other, most people read these words, 'Lord! now lettest
Thou Thy servant depart in peace,' as being a petition; 'Lord! now
_let_ Thy servant depart.' But they are not that at all. We
have here not a petition or an aspiration, but a statement of the
fact that Simeon recognises the appointed token that his days were
drawing to an end, and it is the glad recognition of that fact.
'Lord! I see now that the time has come when I may put aside all
this coil of weary waiting and burdened mortality, and go to rest.'
Look how he regards approaching death. 'Thou lettest Thy servant
depart' is but a feeble translation of the original, which is better
given in the version that has become very familiar to us all by its
use in a musical service, the _Nunc Dimittis_; 'Now Thou
_dost send away_' It is the technical word for relieving a
sentry from his post. It conveys the idea of the hour having come