3.06. Anna — Aged and Hopeful

CHAPTER VI Anna — Aged and Hopeful

ANNA was an exceedingly aged woman. According to the lowest reckoning, that of our Authorised Version, she was eighty-four years old, a great age with us to-day, though so much has been done of late to lighten the weight of years by adding to their comforts, and in ancient times, which were not favoured with these comforts, a more remarkable length of life to have attained to. But there is good reason to think that the Revisers have more correctly rendered St. Luke’s meaning in connecting the eighty-four years simply with Anna’s widowhood —reading, “ and she had been a widow for fourscore and four years.” Previous to this she had lived seven years with her husband; supposing she was, according to Jewish custom, about fourteen years old when she was married, we have another twenty-one years to add, making her age, when she appears in the gospel history, no less than a hundred and five years. That would be a phenomenal age at any time.

Longevity, interesting as it is to the curious, and appealing as it does to sympathy and respectful treatment on the part of all of us, still requires some corresponding venerableness of character to justify its claims. The old age of Anna is doubly venerable because it crowns a life of devotion. All these eighty-four years of her widowhood she had spent in the temple; not indeed actually making it her abode, for that would never have been permitted to a woman, but still spending all possible time there — going up to it night and day. We cannot quite compare her with those vestal virgins of her own time who watched in the temple of Jupiter at Rome, or with the Christian women of later ages who devoted themselves to the religious life in convents; for Anna had been married.

She had taken a matron’s share in the duties of life, though but for a few years in a far-off past that must have seemed to her in these later days like a dream of another world. It was her widowhood that drove her to this life of devotion in the temple. The early loss of her husband was as the taking of the light of her eyes from her, so that thenceforth / the fair world had no longer any charm. Spring might \ bloom; but it was not for her whose winter had come upon her in the May time of her life. And autumn might ripen its fruits; but the joys of the vintage festivals wex-e not for one whose home had been made desolate for ever. Other Jewish women, widowed young, married again. Such was not Anna’s way. For her the world had no more promise.

— Sorrow had claimed her as his bride. And yet she did not sink in despair. She did not die of grief. Few meet that fate, though many have sought it. The reason for this is not, as cynical persons tell us, that sorrow is more easily forgotten than mourners imagine; it is rather that there is more capacity for enduring pain in human nature than any can believe until they have been put to the test. But Anna found a great^antidote to sorrow in the surrender of her life to prayer; and’ in prayer she found health and peace. Through the long years of her widowhood — themselves constituting more than an average lifetime — she spent her whole time in prayers and fastings and vigils, till custom became second nature to her, and her life absolutely without change, quite abnormally uneventful, flowed on like a calm river slowly winding among green meadows, every new turn a repetition of its predecessors, the memory of the cataract near its source receding further and further into the distant past.

Stirring events happened in the world outside during the course of these many years of Anna’s vigils in the temple.

There was terrible war between the Asmonean brothers, Aristobulus and Hircanus, bringing a flood of misery over the land; and through all this eventful time Anna watched and prayed in the temple. The Roman legions came and camped on the hills round Jerusalem, and Pompey their general actually violated the sanctity of the holy place, penetrating into the innermost part of the temple; still she watched and prayed. Herod attained to the throne and his course was marked with war and murder and hateful crime; but Anna was still faithful to her post through all these days of blood and misery. She had spent half a lifetime in the temple when he began his wicked reign; and now that his long rule was over, its lurid hoiTOrs at length come to an end, Anna was still there, surviving all.

One who could thus live through such scenes of change, without allowing any change to enter into her habits, would seem to be no longer a denizen of our noisy, restless world.

Already, before its time, her life appears to have attained to some foretaste of the peace of that other world into which most can only enter through the dark gateway of death. To some it may seem that this is by no means the ideal life. In our day the old controversy on the rival merits of the contemplative and the active life has been decisively settled in favour of the latter. The modern English saint is not Anna in the temple; she is the deaconess on her round of visits, the capable parish nurse, or the lady member of the Board of Guardians. It may be asserted that Anna was to blame for entirely devoting her life to worship in a w^orld where there are always so many calls for serving God by work; but we do not know enough of her and her circumstances to be able to pass any judgment with regard to this matter. And even if it should be granted that she was too much of a quietist in those early days when she might be supposed to be strong and active, this could not be said of her in the later time when we first make her acquaintance, for then she is of an age at which all would allow her to be exonerated from any further responsibility for the work of life. This is a privilege of age, one in which the peculiar peace that of rigiit seems to belong to it resides. To be free to stand aside and see the busy rush of life as it sweeps past, no longer responsible for anything in it, must bring relief from the strain and a rare sense of calmness. Such was Anna’s privilege now by right of her years. But the strange thing is that she did not avail herself of it, for she was keenly interested in a now event. Moreover, when she might well have rested entirely in her home she still kept up her long-continued habit, ascending the steps to the temple every day and spending all her time in worship in the sacred courts on into the night. That does not look like indolence. On the contrary, in one so very aged it indicates remarkable activity and energy.

Then is it possible to believe that she who displayed so much spirit in extreme old age had spent a life of indolence? The fact is, a life of devotion, if it is real and sincere, must be one of excepti onal energ y. There is nothing so exhausting as true prayer, especially if it be prayer of intercession for others. Such a profoundly spiritual act calls for strenuous effort in abstracting the thoughts from passing events, suppressing the rising fancies that perpetually invade the sanctuary of the mind, sympathising with the wants and troubles of the people whose cases are to be brought before God, above all realising His presence and trusting everything to Him with complete siirrender, and yet with a full, intelligent appreciation of what is involved in so doing. Few of us can spend much time in such pi-ayer as that; a life so occupied must be one of continuous spiritual exertion. Of course much apparent devotion may be free from any such exertion, may even be quite idle. People who are acquainted with monasticism from the inside tell us that the dull, unspiritual, vegetative existence that is satisfied with a round of formal devotions is only too common among monks, so that the cloister does not minister so much to real devotion as the spectator from the outside might suppose. But the few verses that are all the sources we possess for any information about Anna are enough to show that she had not fallen into this miserable condition of soulless worship. She may have watched with interest the elaborate ceremonial of the temple-worship — the smoking sacrifices, the priests swinging their censers, the choirs of Levites clianting the liturgy or reciting the psalms of the Sweet Singer of Israel. But the language of our evangelist rather implies that her chief occupation was with her private prayers, for which the ample space and the quiet seclusion of the temple precincts, its courts and its porticoes, afforded her the best opportunities. This was the use of the temple which Jesus defended when as He drove out the traffickers He reminded the people of the ancient prophecy, “ My house shall be called a house of prayer.”

There are people to whom the church is just a religious theatre, its services sought after and indulged in for the stimulus they supply to a certain kind of delicious emotion; people who luxuriate in ritual or revel in sermons; people to whom mission services are fascinating luxuries, resorted to only for the excitement they produce, in some cases positively dangerous luxuries that really act as intoxicants, and must be taken in constantly increasing doses to satisfy the morbid craving too much indulgence in them has created. The unwholesome excitement which the Roman lady sought in the gladiatorial show, the religious devotee, if she is “evangelical,” looks for in the revival meeting; if “ ritualistic,” in the ceremonial which can never be “ high “ enough to satisfy her. All this is as far from the strenuous intercessions of an Anna supplicating God on bebalf of her people, as dram-drinking from mountain climbing. When we take a right view of Anna’s prayers we are compelled to renounce the idea that she was neglecting her duty. Was it nothing to her people that this holy woman was pleading with God to send them redemption — for her action in the scene, where for a moment she appears in the gospel story, suggests that this was the great object of her assiduous prayers? If God hears and answers prayer, could such prayer as Anna’s remain without fruit? Is it too much to suggest that Gabriel’s visit to Mary was God’s response to Anna’s prayer? She had been praying for more than an average lifetime when this happened, and Jesus was born at “ the fulness of the time.” Can we think of anything more suited to bring the time of preparation to ripeness than such persistent prayer as this of Anna’s — nearly a centui-y of prayer — still persevering, though all the time the earth was as iron and the heavens were as brass, and not so much as a cloud as small as a man’s hand was to be seen presaging the coming flood of blessing? Such prayer of faith could not count for nothing with the great Watcher of souls. But if the coming of the Christ was in any way the answer to Anna’s prayer, who shall say that she spent all her days in the temple for nothing 1 Besides, with his love for pedigrees, St. Luke is careful to tell us that Anna was of the tribe of Asher, a curious fact to have preserved, for this was one of the l ost ten tr ibes. Probably her prayers were specially devoted to the rescue of the most hopelessly lost sheep of the House of Israel. Then, herself of Northern extraction, perhaps sprung from a family that had remained in the land through all the changes of its history, she would be especially ready to welcome the news that the Christ had come in a family of Galilee.

Moreover, Anna was a prophetess. Her prayers had opened her eyes to things the prayerless never see; and her long vigils in close communion with the other world had made her eloquent. At a time of life when people would look for nothing better than the garrulity of age, she had realised more than the ideal Milton cherished when he wrote in II Penseroso of meditating, "Till old experience doth attain To something like prophetic strain, “

It is not said that, like Simeon, Anna had received any revelation for herself concerning the coming of the expected Christ. But doubtless the old saint had communicated his message to his aged companion in devotion, and she had received it in faith, so that it became the theme of her prophesying. This brings us to another most remarkable trait in the character of Anna. She lived in hope. Aged as she was she still cultivated the healthy habit of looking to the future. “ Hope deferred “ had not made her “ heart sick.” In spite of all the miseries of the times through which she had lived, and notwithstanding the long delay of God’s answer to her prayer, she was one who clung to the noble faith that “ The best is yet to be.”

Such an attitude of mind transforms the whole character of old age. In his famous picture of all the world as a stage, the melancholy Jaques so describes the concluding scenes as to rob them of all dignity and leave nothing but a spectacle of unmitigated wretchedness, actually devoting two of the seven ages of man to decrepitude and decay, the sixth giving us “ the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,” while the “ Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion.”

We must not forget that Shakespeare expresses this melancholy view of life through the lips of a youth who poses artificially as a sentimental pessimist. And yet it is not far from the conventional ideas accepted in former times. A purely worldly conception can scarcely be much brighter, for there is no denying that age is a time of increasing infirmity, the prospect of which can scarcely be in itself very cheerful. Paganism has little with which to relieve the deepening gloom of this descent into the valley. The pathos of Cicero’s eloquent work, De Senedute, lies in the fact that while the writer tries to suggest what consolations he can find, the total impression he leaves on the mind of the reader is not reassuring. Even in the Old Testament Scriptures, although long life is thei-e reckoned a sign of God’s favour, and almost the greatest of blessings, the condition of the aged man is painted in gloomy colours; a Psalmist exclaims —“ The days of our years are threescore years and ten. Or even by reason of strength fourscore years; Yet is their pride but labour and sorrow; For it is soon gone, and we fly away; “ and the “ Preacher “ describes the miserable time when “ the grasshopper shall be a burden.” - But now when we come to old age such as that of Simeon cherishing his revelation that he was not to die till he had seen the Lord’s Christ, and Anna, who was old already while men and women now reckoned of good age were still in the prime of life, also buoyed up with hope, we find ourselves in an entirely different atmosphere. The melancholy of age has vanished, giving place to a cheerful serenity.

We are none of us older than our hearts. However great the number of years by which the duration of a life is reckoned, and even however real its increase of bodily infirmities may be, wherever the heart is young and hopeful, old age is really unknown. This is the essential difference between youth and age; youth looks forward, age backward. It has been said that when a man in going up hill stops every few yards to look back, that is a sure sign that he is already old. He who lives in the past is old, though his hair may not have turned grey. On the other hand, a wrinkled countenance, a stooping back, a shuffling gait, will not prove age if the life within is young, with interest in the future; nor will dates and figures settle the question. Bodies must needs fail with time and be laid aside like worn-out garments. But men and women are more than the clothes they put on in the morning of life to put off in the evening. Souls are not limited by the chronological boundaries that circumscribe the existence of bodies. As, alas, we may find souls blind and deaf, decrepit and quite worn out, in bodies that can be reckoned still young, so we may find youthful souls in old bodies — young tenants in old houses. Now there is nothing that keeps the life in a man so fresh as the happy faculty of taking a keen interest in the present concerns of the world, unless it be the rarer faculty of anticipating the future, looking forward to it and believing in it, “ forgetting those things that are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before.”

There is another aspect of this relation between age and hope. Anna’s attitude of mind towards the future may in some way account for the extraordinary length of her life. When hope vanishes out of a life the spring of energy disappears, and it forthwith droops and fades. It is difficult to imagine that such a dreary, listless existence could be protracted a long way beyond the normal limits. Sorrow came to Anna early; and the subsequent course of her life may suggest that it never really left her. But sorrow had not brought despair. She did not abandon hope; she transferred it to other and larger objects than those which had come within the limits of her happier youthful experience. With no more room for hope concerning her own personal enjoyment she lived for the greater part of her days in the pursuit of a grand hope for her people in the redemption that God was about to bring about, thus “ Ever by a mighty hope, Pressing on and bearing up.” This vivifying influence of hope in Anna, defying and keeping back the natural oncoming of age and decay, was supported by another quickening influence. The way in which Anna spent her years was in itself a source of vigour. It was prophesied of old that, “ Even the youths shall faint and be~weary, and the young men shall utterly fall; but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint. “^ Did ever any put this promise to the test as Anna was now doing — for the space of eighty-four years assiduously waiting on the Lord 1 If there was truth in the ancient oracle, assuredly one who lived as she was living must have discovered it. And here is the sequel. Her strength was renewed beyond all ordinary e::perience. Spending her days close to the very fountain of Divine life, even her natural life was gifted with a most wonderful vigour. Perhaps this must not be pressed too far. Unhappily there is to be seen in the world that most odious of spectacles, godless old age, going down to the grave weighted with years but not with honours; and on the other hand there are many youthful saints among the blessed dead. We are all subject to physical limits which the spirit cannot transcend. Nevertheless it remains true that within these limits the spiritual has power over the material. No doubt the prophecy refers chiefly to spiritual strength; but for all that may be urged to the contrary, it still remains reasonable to conclude that such a life as that of Anna’s, passed in constant communion with God, reached deep wells of energy unknown to those who live only on the surface and for the moment. Thus she realised the promise to her ancestor. It was to Asher the Patriarch gave the blessing, “ As thy days, so shall thy strength be.”

Such then was the aged Anna as she appeared for a moment in the course of the gospel story. This was when Joseph and Mary had brought up the infant Jesus to present Him in the temple. Simeon first saw the child and took Him in his arms, blessing God that the promise of the revelation he had cherished in his bosom was at length fulfilled. Now he is ready for his Nunc dimittis.

What more is there for him to live fori No redemption is yet effected. The Redeemer is but a helpless babe in His mother’s arms. Any work that He might accomplish must still wait for years. But it is enough for the old man’s faith that the Christ is born. The rest will follow. At that moment Anna comes in to her daily prayer.

There is nothing to indicate that she expects this visit to differ in any material respects from any other of her visits to the house of prayer, now amounting to more than thirty thousand. One of the fatal consequences of long-continued custom is that it comes to regard itself as a sort of fate which must go on for ever as it has been from time immemorial. Anna’s remarkable spirit of hopefulness saved her from sinking into this lethargy of habit.

Still it is not to be supposed that she had any exceptional expectation when yet once again her aged feet mounted the temple steps and trod the pavement of the sacred enclosure. So much the greater must have been her joy in discovering that at last her long cherished, undying hope was to be realised.

Now we may naturally ask. How was it that these two old people at once recognised the child Jesus as the Christ of prophecy? The fanciful legends that encircle His infancy with startling wonders must be dismissed as the fruits of superstitious imagination. There was no golden nimbus about His bead to distinguish Him from other infants, whom other mothers before Mary had brought up to present at the temple. What hosts of these Anna must have seen, generation after generation, till the daughters and the granddaughters and the great-granddaughters of those who had been brought in her earlier days came up with their children for a like recognition of God’s claim upon them! In all these troops of infants, thousands upon thousands of them, no Christ had been discovered. Why then should the northern peasant’s child be at once accepted as the expected One? To every mother her own child has its unique charm; but Anna was too old to be deceived by any fond illusion a young woman might entertain on that account. It is not likely that even her vast experience, gathered from so many years’ observation of the mothers who came from to time to present their babes in the temple, would enable her to discern anything in the external semblance of Mary’s child. Possibly Mary told both Simeon and Anna about the mysteries that accompanied His birth. Sacred as those mysteries were, and usually hidden in her breast only to be pondered by the awed mother in the secret of her own thoughts, she might see in these two aged souls, that scarcely seemed to belong to this world, fit confidants for her great. secret. And yet it is scarcely likely. And even if she did tell them everything, there is still the question to be asked —How was it that they believed her at once?

Perhaps we should rather conclude that to both of these watchers in the temple, or it may be to Simeon alone, to whom a revelation had been given previously, there came an inward assurance, not to be denied, that here was the fulfilment of the glorious promise. That is the more likely since St. Luke expressly states that Simeon “ came in the spirit into the temple.” Thus he was prepared to see what a man who was not in his inspired mood would have failed to discern. Then Anna was a prophetess; but still she may have gained her assurance from her fellow- worshipper, for it is lemarkable tha,t in both cases the specific Divine privilege is referred to Simeon. He it was to whom the promise was made; and now he it is who is “ in the spirit,” and thus, perhaps, is enabled to recognise the infant Christ. Neither of these things is affirmed of Anna.

He is the seer; to him comes the revelation. Her part is prayer and giving thanks. If then she was equally assured and steadfast, hers we must allow was the greater faith, and therefore the greater blessedness Jesus promised to “ them that have not seen and yet have believed.”

However the assurance had been attained, and with regard to this matter we are left entirely to conjecture, the interesting fact remains, that both Simeon and Anna did receive the infant Jesus as the promised Christ. Here then is the answer to Anna’s prayers. Her first impulse is to give thanks. Like Simeon, she is satisfied, though as yet no visible steps have been taken for the redemption of Israel. The Redeemer has come; then the rest must follow. Contrary to his custom on other occasions, St. Luke has not given us a hymn expressive of Anna’s praises. Did she raise her aged voice in song in the sacred courts of the temple? However that may have been, we may be well assured it was no meagre half-hearted expression of praise to God that burst from her lips. In proportion to the long perseverance of her prayers, continued without intermission from youth to extreme old age, must have been the glad outburst of her gratitude when she perceived at this late end of her life that God had heard and answered them.

Anna did not keep this great discovery to herself. She went about spreading the news, though within a limited circle. No idle gossip, we may be sure, or she would not spend her life as she was doing in the seclusion of devotion, Anna would be listened to with attention. As a prophetess she must be believed to have had the gift of speech in an exceptional degree. It seems not at all improbable that her devotions had been varied by the exercise of prophecy in the teaching and encouraging of her fellow-worshippers. The people to whom Anna conveyed this glad news are significantly described by St. Luke as those “that were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.” Among such no doubt both Anna and Simeon should be classed. This was a group of devout souls united in their common hope of the Divine deliverance of their city. There is something more in their hope than the vague Messianic expectation which was in the minds of many at this time. Even that was ignored by the worldly Sadducees, as well as by the multitude of careless folk who always constitute so large a portion of society. But some were devoting themselves to their national hope with eager interest. The literature of this time, which has been recently brought to light, supplies striking testimony to the fact. The Apocalypse of Barjich — the Book of Enoch — the Boole of the Secrets of Enoch — as well as the Psalms of Solomon, a century or more earlier — these works are all of them alive with the great hope. Possibly Anna and her friends were students of this literature. And yet it would be a mistake to suppose they were wholly its disciples, for a deeper note is sounded in our story than we often hear in the apocalyptic utterances. Those works indulge too freely in materialistic pictures of the grand future of the Jews. The devout Anna and others who sympathised with her, would surely have read a more profound and spiritual meaning into the word “ Redemption,” and it is likely their thoughts were fed more satisfactorily from the great teachings of the Prophets. Thus they were the continuation of the ancient “remnant,” perpetuating the faith of the Patriarchs, the devotion of the Psalmists, the lofty spiritual thoughts of the Prophets — a living link between what was best in the old covenant and the new — the early seed-bed for converts to the Gospel — the first-fruits of the Kingdom of Heaven.