The Place of the Solved Problem

Until I went into the sanctuary.’’ — Psa.LM lxxiii. 17.

THE psalmist was filled with confusion until he went into the sanctuary. And the sanctuary is not necessarily a temple made with hands. It is possible to be in a place of worship and not be in the sanctuary. We can enter the door of the church and still be in the street. That was the deadly bane of

Pharisaism., It was inside the house made with hands; it was outside the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. When we are inside the material walls there is a further journey to be made before the sanctuary is reached; we have to pass through the walls of the letter into the spirit, through the roadway of formalities into vital communion, through every ecclesiastical commonplace into the secret place.

And yet a church may be, and ought to be, the best of all ways of getting into the sanctuary of the Lord. Its walls are the witnesses of wonderful experiences. They have no speech nor language, yet they echo the songs of pilgrims who have found the eternal peace. The church is fragrant with the mystic incense of victorious suppliants. It carries venerable stores of precious traditions. And in the church we meet fellowseekers, intent upon the sanctuary — one with an anthem, another with a burden, one with a sigh and a cry, and another with a song of deliverance.

So long as this Psalmist remained outside the sanctuary he was shocked and perplexed even to despair. All things seemed thrown together into a jumble, a jarring discord, a hopeless entanglement to which he had no clue. All the ground around him seemed to be one wide, marshy waste in which he could find no footing. Everything yielded! There was no rock, no rock of ages!

And in this perplexity and sinking of mind and of heart he ‘‘ went into the sanctuary.” And something happened which lifted him out of the horrible pit and the miry clay, and set his feet upon a rock, and established his goings. He was steadied. He was quieted. It was not that he received some brilliant and satisfying interpretation of events, but that there was given to him an assured and satisfying communion with the Lord by whom the events were controlled. He did not find a clue, he found his God; not a clear explanation, but a great Companion. The miracle was not that his path was made to blaze with light; it was rather that the Lord touched him and the fever left him.

‘* We touch Him in life’s throng and press, And we are whole again!”’

And in these awful and chaotic days the way into the sanctuary is open, wide open! And the Lord is waiting for His bewildered pilgrims, waiting with the gracious gifts of assurance, courage, and peace.