In 1831, when Simeon was seventy-two years old, he preached his last
sermon before the university. The place was crowded. The heads
of houses, the doctors, the masters of art, the bachelors, the
undergraduates, the townsmen, all crowded to hear the venerable
preacher. They hung on his words and listened with the deepest
reverence.
His closing days were singularly bright and happy. Three weeks before
his death a friend, seeing him look more than usually calm and
peaceful, asked him what he was thinking of.
"I don't think now," he answered brightly; "I enjoy."
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.
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