CHAPTER 4
Mountain of Camphire
JOY: The Victory of Love

A few days after the experience recorded in the last chapter, the King again called Grace and Glory and told her that he wished to take her to another part of the High Places, and he led her right across the Mountain of Pomegranates to the next part of the same mountain range. Up there on the High Places, above all the clouds and mist of the valley, the sky was always gloriously unclouded and the light so clear that it was possible to look out across immense distances.

On this particular early morning (for the times of solitary fellowship and communion with the King were generally during the very early hours before the work of the day started), Grace and Glory saw that though all was calm and clear up there on the mountain, the valleys were filled with billowing clouds, so that they seemed to be looking out over a sea of swirling waters, and from time to time thunder came rolling up from the depths beneath.

After crossing the Mountain of Pomegranates they came to another which the King told her was called the Mountain of Camphire, for it was specially set apart for the cultivation of that spice. The camphire, or henna bushes which grew up there yielded a most lovely perfume, and also a costly dye.

Grace and Glory looked around with great delight. Instead of the pomegranate trees of the first mountain, these slopes were covered with fragrant little bushes from which hung clusters of small white flowers with the sweetest scent imaginable. These were the bushes which yielded the spice which in our language is called joy.

It seemed that these fragrant groves had a peculiar attraction for the birds. Never in her life had Grace and Glory seen such multitudes of them assembled in one place. Every bush seemed to be swaying with the motion of alighting or departing birds. They flew in great flocks, weaving beautiful patterns with their feathers glittering against the sky, and the moving of their wings stirred the air, so that as they swooped or rushed past it was as though gusts of wind blew over the mountainside. All the birds were singing together as melodiously and diversely as an orchestra of musical instruments, until the whole area seemed alive with beating wings, rushing wind and song, while everything was drenched in the sweet, tingling perfume of the camphire bushes. It was so lovely that Grace and Glory could not restrain herself but laughed aloud with joy and clapped her hands.

As they walked along the mountain slope, the King told her a little about the nature of the camphire bushes which produce the fruit of joy. He explained to her that before the perfumed oil could be produced by the plant, the ground around the bushes needed to be manured with a bitter substance which the roots of the bushes drew in from the soil and changed into the oil of gladness. There were certain seasons when his workmen treated the soil in this way, just before the heavy winter rains and snows began when everything on the bushes faded and fell to the ground and the branches were left completely bare. As he told her this, the King looked at his companion and said to her with one of his beautiful smiles: