When the days of their purification according to the law of Moses were fulfilled, they brought him up to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord

 These three ceremonies are strange old ceremonies; but all three have at the back of them the conviction that a child is a gift of God. The Stoics used to say that a child was not given to a parent but only lent. Of all God's gifts there is none for which we shall be so answerable as the gift of a child. 