Suppose we had been in that court when in the morning or in the evening
the priest came with the glowing pan of coals from another altar in the
outer court, and laid it on this altar, and heaped upon it the sticks
of incense, we should have seen the curling, fragrant wreaths ascending
till 'the House was filled with smoke,' as a prophet once saw it. We
should not have wanted any interpreter to tell us what that meant. What
could that rising cloud of sweet odours signify but the ascent of the
soul towards God? Put that into more abstract words, and it is just the
old, hackneyed commonplace which I seek to try to freshen a little now,
that incense is the symbol of prayer. That that is so is plain enough,
not only from the natural propriety of the case, but because you find
the identification distinctly stated in several places in Scripture, of
which I quote but two instances. In one psalm we read, 'Let my prayer
come before Thee as incense.' In the Book of the Apocalypse we read of
'golden bowls full of odours, which are the prayers of saints.' And
that the symbolism was understood by, and modified the practice of, the
nation, we are taught when we read that whilst Zechariah the priest was
within the court offering incense, as it was his lot to do, 'the whole
multitude of the people were without praying,' doing that which the
priest within the court symbolised by his offering. So then we come to
this, dear friends, that we fearfully misunderstand and limit the
nobleness and the essential character of prayer when, as we are always
tempted to do by our inherent self-regard, we make petition its main
feature and form. Of course, so long as we are what we shall always be
in this world, needy and sinful creatures; and so long as we are what
we shall ever be in all worlds, creatures absolutely dependent for life
and everything on the will and energy of God, petition must necessarily
be a very large part of prayer. But the more we grow into His likeness,
and the more we understand the large privileges and the glorious
possibilities which lie in prayer, the more will the relative
proportions of its component parts be changed, and petition will become
less, and aspiration will become more. The essence of prayer, the
noblest form of it, is thus typified by the cloud of sweet odours that
went up before God.
In all true prayer there must be the lowest prostration in reverence
before the Infinite Majesty. But the noblest prayer is that which lifts
'them that are bowed down' rather than that which prostrates men before
an inaccessible Deity. And so, whilst we lie low at His feet, that may
be the prayer of a mere theist, but when our hearts go out towards Him,
and we are drawn to Himself, that is the prayer that befits Christian
aspiration; the ascent of the soul toward God is the true essence of
prayer. As one of the non-Christian philosophers--seekers after God, if
ever there were such, and who, I doubt not, found Him whom they
sought--has put it, 'the flight of the lonely soul to the only God';
that is prayer. Is that my prayer? We come to Him many a time burdened
with some very real sorrow, or weighted with some pressing
responsibility, and we should not be true to ourselves, or to Him, if
our prayer did not take the shape of petition. But, as we pray, the
blessing of the transformation of its character should be realised by
us, and that which began with the cry for help and deliverance should
always be, and it always will be, if the cry for help and deliverance
has been of the right sort, sublimed into 'Thy face, Lord, will I
seek.' The Book of Ecclesiastes describes death as the 'return of the
spirit to God who gave it.' That is the true description of prayer, a
going back to the fountain's source. Flames aspire; to the place
'whence the rivers came thither they return again.' The homing pigeon
or the migrating bird goes straight through many degrees of latitude,
and across all sorts of weather, to the place whence it came. Ah!
brethren, let us ask ourselves if our spirits thus aspire and soar. Do
we know what it is to be, if I might so say, like those captive
balloons that are ever yearning upwards, and stretching to the loftiest
point permitted them by the cord that tethers them to earth?
Now another thought that this altar of incense may teach us is that the
prayer that soars must be kindled. There is no fragrance in a stick of
incense lying there. No wreaths of ascending smoke come from it. It has
to be kindled before its sweet odour can be set free and ascend. That
is why so much of our prayer is of no delight to God, and of no benefit
to us, because it is not on fire with the flame of a heart kindled into
love and thankfulness by the great sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The cold
vapours lie like a winding-sheet down in the valleys until the sun
smites them, warms them, and draws them up. And our desires will hover
in the low levels, and be dank and damp, until they are drawn up to the
heights by the warmth of the Sun of righteousness. Oh! brethren, the
formality and the coldness, to say nothing of the inconsecutiveness and
the interruptedness by rambling thoughts that we all know in our
petitions, in our aspirations, are only to be cured in one way:--
'Come! shed abroad a Saviour's love,
And that will kindle ours.'
It is the stretched string that gives out musical notes; the slack one
is dumb. And if we desire that we may be able to be sure, as our Master
was, when He said, 'I know that Thou hearest me always,' we must pray
as He did, of whom it is recorded that 'He prayed the more earnestly,'
and 'was heard in that He feared.' The word rendered 'the more
earnestly' carries in it a metaphor drawn from that very fact that I
have referred to. It means 'with the more stretched-out extension and
intensity.' If our prayers are to be heard as music in heaven, they
must come from a stretched string.
Once more, this altar of incense teaches us that kindled prayer
delights God. That emblem of the sweet odour is laid hold of with great
boldness by more than one Old and New Testament writer, in order to
express the marvellous thought that there is a mutual joy in the prayer
of faith and love, and that it rises as 'an odour of a sweet smell, a
sacrifice acceptable, well pleasing to God.' The cuneiform inscriptions
give that thought with characteristic vividness and grossness when they
speak about the gods being 'gathered like flies round the steam of the
sacrifice.' We have the same thought, freed from all its grossness,
when we think that the curling wreaths going up from a heart aspiring
and enflamed, come to Him as a sweet odour, and delight His soul.
People say, 'that is anthropomorphism--making God too like a man.'
Well, man is like God, at any rate, and surely the teaching of that
great name 'Father' carries with it the assurance that just as fathers
of flesh are glad when they see that their children like best to be
with them, so there is something analogous in that joy before the
angels of heaven which the Father has, not only because of the prodigal
who comes back, but because of the child who has long been with Him,
and is ever seeking to nestle closer to His heart. The Psalmist was
lost in wonder and thankfulness that he was able to say 'He was
extolled with my tongue.' Surely it should be a gracious, encouraging,
strengthening thought to us all, that even our poor aspirations may
minister to the divine gladness.
Now let us turn to another thought.