Madame Tussauds waxworks on the Marylebone Road is one of the great tourist attractions of London.

Marie Tussaud was born in Strasbourg in 1761. Her mother worked as a housekeeper for a Doctor Phillipe Curtius who was skilled in wax modelling.

Dr Curtius taught his skills to Marie. When he died, he left her his large collection of wax death masks.

During the French Revolution, Marie Tussaud made wax death-masks of prominent victims.  She had to search through the corpses to find the decapitated heads.

In 1802 she travelled through Britain and Ireland, exhibiting her collection.  In 1835 she established her first permanent collection in Baker Street.  This museum moved to Marylebone Road in 1844 and is still there today!

Originally it was a “Chamber of Horrors”, including some victims of the French Revolution and also other infamous murderers and criminals.  Later on, other famous people like Nelson and Sir Walter Scott were added, as well as the Royal Family! Today, of course, there is a whole galaxy of personalities from all walks of life.

Like Madam Tussauds, there is  lot of wax in Ogle Street  but hopefully only from the candles and lights! Hopefully there are no wax worshippers among us and no wax priests either – but you can never be sure!

Hopefully all of us are really SINCERE people.The English word “SINCERE” comes from two Latin words, SINE, which means “without” and “CERA”, which means “wax”.  So the literal meaning of SINCERE is “WITHOUT WAX”.  A sincere person has no masks; a sincere person has no wax smiles and no wax handshakes at the Sign of Peace!

The only place for wax people is Madame Tussauds.  The church is for REAL people, SINCERE people, that is, for people who have real sins and sin sincerely!  Only sincere sin, sin honestly acknowledged, can lead us to sincere virtue.

So, light a candle today and learn a lesson from the melting wax!