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But is this a shining path? The question is sure to come even if we are only going through the lesser ills of life, and if it be the greater, the kind that wrings soul or body with giant hands, that question will come with tremendous force. Is this a path that shineth more and more unto the perfect day? Is to live like this to bring our Lord anything worth offering? Or is such writing a mere jumble of words—a religious lie, most despicable of lies?
It is not a lie; it is true. We do not build our faith on the baseless fabric of a dream. Pretty fictions are brittle toys. And yet the seen and the felt crowd upon us so mercilessly, and crush us so, that it can be very difficult honestly to believe that things are different in reality from what they appear to be. We cannot see a path that shines. We cannot see anything in our life, lived as it must be now, that can possibly give pleasure to our Lord.
But continually we look at things about, us without seeing more than a very little of what is there. We look up into the sky at noon and know that familiar constellations are passing over us, but we do not see them. Empty blue, or grey, or masses of cloud—that is all we see. We look at a pool or any little runlet of softly flowing water; we are looking into fairyland; but we do not catch even a flutter of a fairy scarf. Water and the reflections and colors on its surface—that is all we see. We know that we see in part where the material world is concerned. Why should we not be comforted where the spiritual is in question by remembering that there also we see only in part? We dwell perpetually in the presence of far more than we can see. Our feelings say, “How can this thing be good?” But if God declares it is, that is enough. And as we follow on to know the Lord we learn that our puny circumstances shall never defy the powers of quickening Love. And Love kindles faith. And Love strengthens faith. And Love nourishes the full assurance of hope. And then Love leads us into prayer.
For Love is always saying, “Seek ye My face”; and our hearts are always answering, “Thy face, Lord, will I seek.” But even as we seek, pressing through the outer courts of the House to behold the beauty of the Lord and to enquire in His temple, we are beset by a question, perhaps by a doubt that waits on the very threshold of the House, seeking to confound us as we would enter in: How can our prayer, so fitful, so interrupted, so weighted, so far from what we want it to be, rise to that pure place where His honor dwelleth? “Hear Thou in heaven Thy dwelling-place: and when Thou hearest, forgive”—gratefully we use the words. “Thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy....Not weighing our merits but pardoning our offences.” But He has so much to pardon; only our hearts know how much. And there are no merits to weigh, nor ever can be.
Our heavenly Father often answers our questions as we answer our children’s, in plain words; but sometimes He takes us into “that higher world where metaphor, as we know it, is the very stuff of life.” His plain words about prayer are our familiar friends, but we may have missed the comfort that is in St. John’s vision of the angel who came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer. And there was given unto him much incense that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints (forgiven sinners, whom Love names so) ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand. Those prayers that we know were so poor are cared for as something of value. They are put in golden bowls, and with them is mixed the Much Incense of the merits of our Lord.
I did not fully understand the divine simplicity of the words “And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand,” till I saw incense used, as it has been from time immemorial in India, in simple household ways. You throw a few grains on burning charcoal and a column of smoke rises straight up. Anyone coming into the room notices the fragrance long after the smoke has disappeared. It fills the room, floats out through the open doors and windows, and for an hour or so, if the air be still, you are aware of it about the house. I never watch that white column of smoke, laden with its own peculiar fragrance, without a grateful thought about that of which it is the figure. There is nothing in our prayers that would cause them to rise. But they are cleansed and perfumed and lifted. It is all of Him who ever liveth to make intercession for us. It is all of Him who is our one eternal radiance:
O Love of loves, we have no good to bring Thee,
No single good of all our hands have wrought.
No worthy music have we found to sing Thee,
No jeweled word, no quick up-soaring thought.
And yet we come; and when our faith would falter
Show us, O Lord, the quiet place of prayer,
The golden censer and the golden altar,
And the great angel waiting for us there.
And now for today, in this room, ward, workshop, house; in city or in village, or in ship upon the sea; in our going forth with others or endurance out of sight, in the “now” and “here” of common life, may we not make a pause for adoration? Our Lord is too little adored: To Him who is “above all the knighthood of heaven” be glory. Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honor, and power, and might, be unto our God forever and ever. Therefore with angels and archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify Thy glorious Name; evermore praising Thee, and saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts, heaven and earth are full of Thy glory: Glory be to Thee, O Lord most high.