"My hands, Mother, that ye now see, Shall be nailed to a tree; My feet also fast shall be, Men shall weep that shall see this."

Now sing we with Angelis: Gloria in excelsis.

"Ah, dear Son, hard is my happe To see my child that lay in my lap,-- His hands, His feet that I did wrappe,-- Be so nailed; they never did amisse."

Now sing we with Angelis: Gloria in excelsis.

"Ah, dear Mother, yet shall a spear My heart asunder all but tear: No wonder if I care-ful were And wept full sore to think on this."

Now sing we with Angelis: Gloria in excelsis.

PART TWO

CHAPTER VIII

THE MAGI

Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, Behold, there came Magi from the East to Jerusalem, Saying, Where is he that is born king of the Jews?

S. Matt. II, i.

Hail to thee, Mary, the fair dove, which hath borne for us G.o.d the Word. We give thee salutation with the Angel Gabriel, saying, Hail, thou that art full of grace; the Lord is with thee.

Hail to thee, O Virgin, the very and true Queen; hail, glory of our race. Thou hast borne for us Emmanuel.

We pray thee, remember us, O thou our faithful advocate with our Lord Jesus Christ, that He may forgive us our sins.

COPTIC.

Out of the East, over the desert, we see coming to Bethlehem the train of the star-led Magi. The devout imagination of the Church, dwelling upon the _significance_ rather than the bare historical statements of the Gospel, have seen them as the representatives of the whole Gentile world. We often think of the treatment of the sacred story by the teachers and preachers of the Church as embroidering the original narratives with legendary material. We can look at it in that way; and by so doing, I think, miss the meaning of the facts. What we call ecclesiastical legend will often turn out on examination to be but the unfolding of the meaning of an event in terms of the creative imagination. The object is to present vividly what the event actually means when the meaning is of such widely reaching significance as far to overpa.s.s the simple facts. It is thus, I take it, that we must understand the story of the Magi as it takes shape in pious story. That the Magi were kings, and that they were three in number, emphasises the felt importance of their coming to the cradle of our Lord. Actually, they were understood to represent the Gentile world offering its allegiance to our blessed Lord, and therefore they would naturally represent the three branches of the Gentile world as it was understood at the time. The importance of their mission was reflected in the presentation of them as kings--no less persons were required to fill the dignity of the part. There was, too, a whole ma.s.s of prophecy to be reckoned with and interpreted in its relation to the event, the most obvious of which was that of Isaiah: "And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising."

The Church story is essentially true, is but a dramatic rendering of the Gospel story. We may however content ourselves with the more simple rendering. We can hardly think of the stable as the setting of the reception of the Eastern Sages. Just when they came we cannot tell; but we seem compelled to put the Epiphany where the Church puts it in her year, somewhere between the Nativity and the Presentation, and the scene of it will still be, the Gospel implies, Bethlehem. "Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, Behold, there came Magi from the East to Jerusalem." And at the direction of Herod, and guided by the Star they came to Bethlehem and offered their gifts and their worship. "They saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh."

We try to get before us what would have been the mind of S. Mary through all these happenings which attended the birth of her Child. What is written of her here is no doubt characteristic: "Mary kept all these and pondered them in her heart." Wonder at the ways of G.o.d had been hers for so many months now--wonder, with devout meditation upon their meaning.

Where there is no resistance to G.o.d's will but only the desire to know it more fully there is always the gradual a.s.similation of the truth. S.

Mary moves in a realm of mystery from the moment of the Annunciation to the very end of her life. It is so difficult to understand what is the meaning of G.o.d in this unspeakable gift of a Son conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, and in the constant accompaniment of pain and disaster and disappointment which is the unfolding experience of her life in relation to Him. But we feel in her no speculation, no rebellion, no insistence on knowing more; but we feel that there must have been a growing appreciation of the work of G.o.d, unhesitating acceptance of His will. Just to keep things in one's heart is so often the best way of arriving at an understanding of them; is the best way, at least, of arriving at the conviction that what we in fact need to understand is not so much what G.o.d does as that it is G.o.d Who does it.

Our true aim in life is to understand G.o.d, and through that understanding we shall sufficiently understand life. Failure in human life is commonly due to an attempt to understand life without any attempt to understand it in relation to G.o.d. It is like an attempt to understand a work of art without an attempt to understand the artist, to estimate in terms of mechanical effort, rather than in terms of mind. A work of art means what the artist means when he creates it: life means what G.o.d means in His creation and government of it, and it is hopeless to expect to understand it without reference to the mind of G.o.d.

Therefore Mary's way is the right way--the way of acceptance and meditation. So she sought to follow the mind of G.o.d. We are told little of her, but we are told quite enough to understand this. We know well her method, that she kept things in her heart. And we have one splendid example of the result of the method in the Magnificat. There the results of her communion with G.o.d break forth in that Canticle which ever since has been one of the priceless treasures of the Church. The Gospels never tell us very much; but if we will follow Mary's method they tell us enough to let us see the very hand of G.o.d in the working out of our salvation; they give us sample events from which we easily infer G.o.d's meaning otherwhere.

And we may be sure that the months that followed the Annunciation would have been months of ever-deepening spiritual communion, resulting in a rapidly advancing spiritual maturity. One necessary result would have been to prepare the blessed Mother to receive new manifestations of G.o.d's Providence, and to fit them into the whole body of her experience.

She would not at any time be lost in helpless surprise before a new development of the purpose of G.o.d. Surprised as she must have been when the Eastern Sages came to kneel before the Child she carried at her breast, and hail Him as born King of the Jews, she would have set to work to fit this new experience into what her acquired knowledge of the divine meaning had become. And one can have no doubt that these visitors from afar would have told her enough of the grounds of their action to illumine for her the prophecies concerning her Son.

The special incidents that the Gospel select for record leave us always conscious that they _are_ a selection and therefore must have special significance. That we are told that the Magi offered certain gifts, rather than told the words of homage wherewith they presented them turns our attention to the nature of the gifts as presumably having a significance in themselves rather than because of any actual value. In the gifts of these Gentiles come from afar to kneel before Him Whom they recognise as King of the Jews, we are compelled to see a certain att.i.tude of humanity toward Him Who is revealed to be not only the King of the Jews, but Lord of Heaven and earth; they give what humanity needs must always give--the gold of a perfect oblation, the incense of perpetual intercession, the myrrh of a humble self-abandonment.

These which are offered as the ideal tribute of humanity by the star-led Magi are found in their highest human perfection exemplified in the Mother of the Child to Whom the tribute is made. Perfect are they in our Lord; and she who is nearest Him in nature is nearest Him in the perfection of nature. We turn from G.o.d's ideal as set out in our blessed Lord to see it reflected as in a gla.s.s in the life of her whose perfection is the perfect rendering of His grace. Mary is so perfect because, by G.o.d's election, she is "full of grace."

We, alas! limp after the ideal at a long distance. One pictures the life of sanct.i.ty under the familiar symbol of the race course, where many start in the race, and many, one by one, fall out by the wayside.

Those who go on the race's end, go on because of certain qualities of endurance that we discover in them. In those who run the spiritual race for the amaranthine crown these qualities of endurance are not natural, but supernatural: they come not of birth but of rebirth. They are qualities which we draw from G.o.d. "It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of G.o.d that showeth mercy." The hand that sets the race confers the gifts that enable one to win it. "So run that ye may obtain."

And perhaps the chiefest of all those gifts is that which makes us, the children of G.o.d, capable of the adoration of our Father. Worship is no other than the utter giving of ourselves, giving as Christ gave, "Who being originally in the form of G.o.d, thought it not a thing to be grasped at to be equal with G.o.d, but emptied Himself, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men"; giving as the blessed Virgin gave when she gave, as she must have thought and have been willing to give, her whole reputation among men in response to the call of G.o.d; giving complete, in which there is no withholding. That is worship, sacrifice, the pure gold of self-oblation.

But it is possible to think of the power of worship from another point of view. G.o.d never takes but He gives. What He appears to take He gives back with His blessing, and we find the restored gift multiplied manifold. So in the very act of our worship G.o.d confers on us power.

For it is true, is it not, that in the very act of worship we experience, not exhaustion but exhilaration. In the very act of giving ourselves to G.o.d, G.o.d gives Himself to us, and in overflowing abundance.

That is what we find to be true in our highest act of worship, the blessed Eucharist. Here G.o.d and man meet in a perfect communion. Here we offer ourselves in sacrifice--ourselves, our souls and bodies--in union with the sacrifice of our Lord; and here our Lord, Who is the sacrifice itself, not only offers Himself, but also He imparts Himself to those who are united with Him. And out of this sacrifice, thus issuing in an act of union, there flows the perpetual renewing of the vitality of the spiritual life. We are sustained from day to day by this sacrificial feeding; our strength which is continually being drawn upon by the demands of life, by the temptations we have to resist, by the exertion that is called for in all spiritual exercise, is renewed by our partic.i.p.ation in the Body and Blood of our Lord. I am sure that all those who are accustomed to frequent communion feel the drain upon their strength when at any time they are deprived of their great privilege. I am also sure that many who feel that their spiritual life is but languid, or those other many who seem only dimly to feel that there are spiritual problems to be met, and spiritual strength needed for the meeting of them, would find themselves immensely helped, would find their minds illumined and their strength sustained in more frequent partic.i.p.ation in the sacrificial worship and feasting of the Church.

The att.i.tude of vast numbers of those who are regarded as quite sincere Christians is wholly incomprehensible. The life of G.o.d is day by day poured out at the altars of the Church, and they go their way in seeming unconsciousness of its presence, of its appeal, of its virtue, or of their own sore need of it. The Magi come from a far distance on a hazardous journey into an unknown country that they may offer the gold of their adoration to an infant King; and the Christian feebly considers whether he is not too tired to get up of a morning and go a short distance to receive the Body and Blood of the Redeemer of his soul!

The Magi came also bringing the incense of their intercession. Their privilege was that they were admitted to the very Presence Chamber of the great King. That the Infant in Mary's arms did not show any sign of kingship, the humble room where they were received bore no resemblance to the presence chamber of such kings as they were accustomed to wait upon, was to them of no consequence. They were endowed with the gift of faith, and believed the supernatural guiding rather than the outward seeming. The faith that had followed the star from so great a distance was not likely to be quenched by the ant.i.thesis of what must have been their imagination of the reality, of all the pictures that had been filling their minds as they pushed on across the desert. It was no more incredible that the King Whom they were seeking should be found in humble guise in a peasant's cottage than that they should have been guided to Him by a heavenly star. The gift of G.o.d to them was that they should be permitted to enter the presence of the King.

This right of admission to the divine Presence is the precious gift of G.o.d to us. Since the heavens received the ascending Lord the Kingdom of heaven has been open to all believers. Prayer is a very simple and common thing in our experience; and yet when we try to think out its implications we are overwhelmed with the wonder of it. It implies a G.o.d Who waits upon our pleasure: it reveals to us a Father Who is ever ready to listen to the voice of His children. No broken hearted sinner, overwhelmed with the conviction of his vileness, cries out in the agony of his repentance but G.o.d is ready to hear. "He is more ready to hear than we to pray." No man pours out his thanksgivings for the abundant blessings he discovers in his life but the heart of G.o.d is glad in his gladness. No child kneels at night to repeat his simple prayer but G.o.d bends over him and blesses him. The wonder of it is summed up in our Lord's words: "The Father Himself loveth you," which are as an open door into the inner sanctuary, an invitation to enter to those who are hesitating on the threshold of the Holy of Holies.

And there is no danger of tiring G.o.d: we come ceaselessly, endlessly.

The cries of earth go up to Him, pitiful, ignorant, foolish cries; but they find G.o.d ready to hear and answer, fortunately not according to our ignorance but according to His great mercy. We think of the clouds of prayer in all ages, from all nations, in all tongues, and the very vastness of them gives us an index of the divine love.

And it is not simply for ourselves that we pray, nor do we pray by ourselves; it is of G.o.d's love that in the work of prayer we are a.s.sociated with one another. There is nothing further from the divine plan of life than our present individualism. Our temptation is to be egotistic and self-centred; to want to approach G.o.d alone with our private needs and wishes. We incline to travel the spiritual way by ourselves; we want no company; we want no one between our souls and G.o.d.

But that precisely is not the divine method. We come to G.o.d through Christ; we come in a.s.sociation with the members of the Body. Our standing as Christians before Him is dependent upon our corporate relation to one another in His Son.

Important issues are involved. We attain through this a.s.sociated life of the Christian the power of mutual intercession. We find that it is our privilege to share our prayers with others, and to be interested in one another's lives. We have common interests and we work them out in common. Therefore when we try to put before us an ideal picture of the power of prayer, it will not be the solitary individual offering his personal supplications to the Father, but it will be the community of the faithful a.s.sembled for the offering of the divine Sacrifice. It is the praying Body that best satisfies our ideal of prayer, where we are conscious of helping one another in the work of intercession. We remember, too, when we think of prayer as prayer of the Body of Christ, that it is not just the visible congregation that is partic.i.p.ating in it, but that all the Body share in the intercessions, wherever they may individually be. Our thoughts go up from the little a.s.sembly in the humble church and lose themselves in the splendour of the heavenly intercession where we are a.s.sociated with prophets and apostles and martyrs, and with Mary the Mother of G.o.d.

There was a third gift that the Magi brought to Him Whom they hailed King, a gift that is more perplexing as a gift to royalty than the other two. That gold and incense should be offered a King is clearly His royal right; but what has he to do with the bitterness of myrrh? But to this King myrrh is a peculiarly appropriate gift, for it is the symbol of complete self-abandonment. He who came to do not His own will but the will of Him that sent Him; Who laid aside the robes of His glory, issuing from the uncreated light that He might clothe Himself with the humility of the flesh, is properly honoured with the gift of myrrh.

And as it was the symbol of His humility, so is it the symbol of our humanity in relation to Him. It suggests to us that uttermost of Christian virtues, the virtue of entire abandonment to the will of G.o.d.

This is a most difficult virtue to acquire. We cling to self. We are devoted to our own wills. We rely on our own judgment and wisdom. We are impatient of all that gets in the way of our self-determination. We have in these last days made a veritable religion out of devotion to self, a cult of the ego.

But he who will enter into the sanctuary of the divine life, he who will seek union with G.o.d, he who will be one with the Father in the Son, must abandon self. He must lose his life in order to save it. He must let go the world to cling to the Lord of life. This will of the man which is so insistent, so persistent, so a.s.sertive, so tenacious, must be laid aside and the Will of Another adopted in its place. Often this is bitter. Very true of us it is that when we were young we girded ourselves and walked whither we would; but it must be in the end, if we make life a spiritual success, that when we are old another shall gird us and carry us whither we would not.

The secret of life is found when the bitterness of myrrh is turned to sweetness in the discovery that the outcome of the sacrificial life is not that it be narrowed but enlarged; and that for the life which we have entrusted to Him G.o.d will do more than we ask or think. When our will becomes one with the will of G.o.d we are surprised to find that we have ceased to think of what we once called our sacrifices, because life in Christ reveals itself to us as of infinite joy and richness, so that we forget the things that are behind and gladly press on.

Queen of heaven, blessed may thou be For G.o.des Son born He was of thee, For to make us free.

Gloria Tibi, Domine.

Jesu, G.o.des Son, born He was In a crib with hay and gra.s.s, And died for us upon the cross.

Gloria Tibi, Dominie.

To our Lady make we our moan, That she may pray to her dear Son, That we may to His bliss come.

Gloria Tibi, Dominie.

Sixteenth Century.

PART TWO

CHAPTER IX

THE PRESENTATION

And when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished, they brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord.