CHAPTER IX

GLORY

THINE is the Kingdom,
the Power,
and the Glory.

Listen to the choir of New College, Oxford,
sing the Gloria from Taverner's West Wind Mass.
Music Details HERE.

The prayer in which is contained the whole movement of man's interior life,
the substance of his communion with God,
is summed up in this delighted declaration of the independent perfection,
the unspeakable transcendence of the Holy.
Before that reality, that majesty, that energy, that splendour,
his own needs, his own significance vanish.
ABBA, Father.
It is true that the Infinite God is the Father of my soul,
that I have a certain kinship with the Abiding,
a privilege of co-operation.
Higher than my highest,
He is yet nearer than my inmost part.
But in the last resort,
I stand entranced and abased before the majesty,
the otherness of that Infinite God.

He calleth the stars by their names.

Listen to the Vauxhall Male Voice Choir sing the Hymn 'Praise the Lord, his Glories show' to Williams' rousing tune Llanfair. Music Details HERE. 

Thine is the Kingdom,

hidden from our sight yet already present in perfection;
Thy secret rule working from within,
Thine unseen pattern imposed on our chaos,
Thy Spirit brooding on the deep,
turn­ing all things to Thy purpose,
and even through conflicts, sin and anguish
conditioning and transforming every aspect of human life.
Thine is the Power, the inexhaustible energy
streaming forth from Thy hidden Being,
by which the universe visible and invisible is sustained.

Thine is the Glory,

the self-revealed splendour of the Eternal Perfect
filling and transcending creation;
seen in its humblest beauties,
yet never fully known.
We look beyond the ramparts of the world
to that triune Reality,
the goal of our faith, hope and love. 

On all this, at the end of its prayer,
the eyes of the faithful soul are opened.
Here life is lost and found again in God.
The whole drive of will and desire is carried out beyond the changing to the Changeless;
and summed up in Him, our only need.
More and more, acts and petitions fall from us.
The agony of our supplication is silenced,
and one simple and confident movement of surrender to the total purpose takes its place.
We end on the acknowledgment
that all we can see, love and delight in,
all that crushes and bewilders, shames or reassures us,
is nothing beside that which we do not and cannot comprehend:

the mystery
which from all ages hath been hid in God.
[Ephes. iii, 9.]

Glory, said the Rabbis—
that brightness on the face of man,
in which the created order gave back a faint reflection of the Eternal Radiance—
was the first thing lost by Adam at the Fall.
But through the incarnation of the Holy in that created order,
it is restored to humanity in Christ.

We beheld His glory,
the glory of the Only Begotten
full of grace and truth.

He is the

first and only fair,

the sacramental disclosure of the Beauty of God.
By one of the strange reversals which are the peculiar secret of love,
the supreme manifestation upon earth of that Absolute Beauty is seen in the sacrifice of the Cross;
the Perfect, the Strong, the Radiant,
self-offered for the sinful, the murky, the weak,
and achieving His victory through suffering, failure, death.
On the face of the Crucified

the light
of the knowledge of the glory of God
is revealed.
[2 Cor. iv. 6.]

Here then we reach the summit of man's prayer,
in this recognition of the self-existent supernatural Glory,
the radiance of Reality lying beyond us,
yet already with us and awaiting us.
In this we achieve an entire release from the earth-centred life
with its disharmonies and griefs,
its fears and cravings,
and anchor our souls in the Unchanging.

Through faith,
says St. Paul,
we stand already in grace.
But we look towards glory;
[Romans v. 2.]

and in that contemplation
we are already gathered into the liberty of the children of God. 

Listen to the Robert Shaw Festival Singers sing F Martin's Gloria. Music Details HERE. 

GLORY is the final word of religion,
as joy is its final state.
The sparks and trickles of the Supernatural which come to us,
the hints received through beauty and through sacrifice,
the mysterious visitations and pressures of grace reaching us
through the conflicts, rebellions and torments of the natural world—
all these are earnests of a Perfection,
a Wholeness yet unseen:
as the small range of sound and colour revealed by the senses
witness to the unseen colour and unheard music
of a Reality which lies beyond their narrow span.
All within the created order points beyond itself,
to the uncreated Kingdom, Power and Glory.
No life, no intelligence reaches perfection;
yet in each there is a promise of the Perfect.
Each comes up to its limit,
and in so doing testifies to that which lies beyond it;
the unlimited splendour of the Abiding,
the Glory of the living God.
So too the creature's prayer comes up to its limit,
and ends upon a word, a reality,
which we can neither define nor apprehend. 

All thy works praise thee, O Lord,
And thy saints give thanks unto thee.
They shew the glory of day kingdom,
And talk of thy power:
That thy power, thy glory, and mightiness of thy kingdom
Might be known unto men.
[Psalm cxlv.10-12.] 

Yet even this Kingdom, Power and Glory,
this threefold manifestation of the character of God, is not ultimate.
The appeal of man's prayer
is to a Reality which is beyond manifestation.
All these are Thine;
but we reach out to Thee.
Beyond the wall of contradiction,
beyond the “Light that is not God”,
almost imperceptible to the attentive creature
and yet the ground of its being and goal of its prayer,
is the secret Presence;
the Thou in whom all things inhere,
by whom all live.
Behind every closed door that seems to shut experience from us He is standing;
and within every experience which reaches us, however disconcerting,
His unchanging presence is concealed.
Not in the wind which sweeps over the face of existence to change it,
not in the earthquake which makes sudden havoc of our ordered life,
not in the overwhelming splendour and fury of the elemental fire:
in none of these,
but in the "voice of gentle stillness,"
speaking from within the agony and bewilderment of life,
we recognize the presence of the Holy
and the completing answer to the soul's completed prayer.
We accept Thy Majesty,
we rejoice in Thy Power and Thy Glory;
but in Thine unchanging quiet is our trust.
We look beyond the spiritual to Spirit,
beyond the soul's country to the personal Origin and Father of its life. 

This is our Lord's will,
says Julian of Norwich,
that our prayer and our trust be both alike large.
[Revelations of Divine Love.  Cap. 42.]

Step by step we have ascended the hill of the Lord;
and here at the summit of our beseeching,
conscious of our own littleness and the surrounding mystery,
we reach out in confidence to the All.
The last phase of prayer carries the soul forward to an entire self-oblivion,
an upward and outward glance of awe­struck worship,
which is yet entinctured with an utter and childlike trust.

ABBA, Father.

Thine is the kingdom,
the power
and the glory.

Thou art the Beginning and the End of the soul's life.

LISTEN to the choir of Paisley Abbey sing the hymn 'Immortal, Invisible, God only Wise.' Music details HERE.
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