THE

BAPTIST QUARTERLY REVIEW.

ARTICLE I.

THE WORSHIP OF THE CHURCH.

BY A. J. ROWLAND, D. D.

WORSHIP, as the word etymologically signifies, is the expression of man's sense of worthship or worthiness-a worthiness nobler and better than any thing of which he is conscious in himself. It is the soul's instinctive recognition of a power or of powers above it in the scale of being, and the reverent acknowledgment of its own inferiority and dependence in the presence of these. Men do not worship because they are commanded so to do, or because they are moved thereto by fear. Worship is a necessity of our nature. It is impossible for men to withhold their adoration and praise of that which they feel to be superior to themselves. Hero worship springs naturally and necessarily from the perception of noble qualities in men. Divine worship is the instinctive and automatic prostration of the soul before a being or beings in whom divine attributes are perceived or supposed to reside. In idol worship men do not pay their homage to the wood or stone of which the idols are themselves composed, but to the superior powers or qualities which these are presumed to embody or represent. Wherever the sense of dependence is felt, wherever there is a recognition of that which is strong and pure, the feeling of worship must necessarily arise.

VOL. V, No. 20-28

That this is true, the history of the race abundantly proves. Men always have worshiped. "Worship," says Dr. Caldwell,* "has been a universal custom as common as government, as natural as dress. Whatever has ceased among men this never has. The dead races, the distant times, have left little besides the relics of their worship. The wondrous stones of Thebes and Pæstum, the spires of Strasburg and Salisbury, no less than Jacob's rude pillar in Bethel, or Moses's tent of skins in the desert, tell that worship is in man a necessary part of his nature and life." Go where we will, to-day, we find men still worshiping. The forms and objects of worship may be different, but the fact remains the same. The rudest tribes as well as the most enlightened nations bow in homage before superior beings or powers, and lay before them their offerings of gratitude or supplication. What does this unvarying conduct of men teach us, but that worship is as natural to the spirit as sight to the eye or hearing to the ear?"

Worship expresses itself in two ways, by prayer and by praise. In prayer we acknowledge our dependence and needs; in praise we adore the divine perfections, and express both our inferiority and gratitude. Of these praise is the nobler element. Dr. Henry Allon, in an essay "On Worship," has well drawn the difference. He says: "Prayer is the pleading of our human indigence and helplessness. Praise is the laudation of divine excellence and sufficiency. Prayer supplicates the good that God may have to bestow; praise is the adoration of the good there is in God himself. When we pray we are urged by our necessities, our fears, and our sorrows; it is the cry of our troubled helplessness, often of our pain or our terror; we are impelled by feelings of unworthiness, memories of sin, yearnings for forgiveness and renewal. Praise brings not a cry, but a song; it does not ask, it proffers; it lifts not its hand, but its heart; it is the voice not of our woe, but of our love; not of beseech

"Madison Avenue Lectures," page 289.
"Ecclesia," page 400.

ing, but of blessing. Prayer asks God to come down to us, praise essays to go up to God. The soul that prays falls prostrate to the ground, often being in an agony; the soul that praises stands with uplifted hand and transfigured countenance, ready to soar away to heaven. Prayer is the accident. of our present sinful necessity; praise is the essence of all religious life, and is eternal. The birthplace and home of prayer is on earth; the birthplace and home of praise is in heaven.".

The object of Christian worship is, of course, the divine. Being. By the divine Being is meant the Trinity. Worship is to be rendered not only to the Father, but to the Son and Holy Spirit. That the historical Christ is the proper object of divine homage and honors is evident from the fact that he himself received such expressions at the hands of men without rebuke, while he was still in his state of humiliation; and from the added fact that immediately upon his ascension, and during the lifetime of his disciples, he was worshiped as God. The worship of the Holy Spirit follows as a natural corollary from that of the Son, since the Spirit takes the place of the Son, and is, therefore, entitled to the same respect from men. Prayer and praise may, therefore, be offered to all the persons of the Trinity. The Savior who died for men, and the Spirit who guides and comforts them, are entitled to their homage, no less than the Father who sent these forth.

And these are the only objects of Christian worship. The worship of the Virgin and of the saints we can not regard other than a species of idolatry, which inevitably withdraws the soul from the true sphere of its adoration. The Romanist, it is true, may himself believe the distinctions between latria, hyperdulia, and dulia, but these distinctions are likely to be misapprehended or overlooked by most minds, and a service rendered the creature which belongs to God alone. The worship of the Virgin originated, doubtless, in a necessity of the human heart. The stern and unscriptural preaching of Christ as exclusively the Judge, which seems to have

distinguished the early Christian centuries, left the throne of God barren of that tenderness which men longed to see there, and the Mother was naturally enough elevated to an undue place in the divine counsels. On the same principle, the saints might be appealed to as tenderly feeling for their suf fering brethren still on the earth, and therefore likely to present an urgent intercession for them. But this whole system of limited worship is built on a misapprehension of the Godhead itself, in which reside all the sympathy and tenderness man can ask, and is, therefore, not only idolatrous, but wrong. To suppose that men need to engage Christ's mother or brethren to move his heart and secure his favor is to offer the entire Godhead one of the deepest insults we can conceive, because this reflects directly upon that infinite love and mercy which Christ and the other persons of the Trinity have, at such infinite sacrifice, sought to display.

The object of Christian worship being, then, God, and God alone, let us pass, in the next place, to consider the methods by which worship may be rendered, and the various questions and relations gathering about these.

A distinction is usually made between private or personal and public or social worship. In one sense, all worship, however and whenever offered, must be private and personal. Worship is, of necessity, an offering of the individual heart. The union of people in prayer and song may excite and intensify the worshipful feeling, but this must, nevertheless, be a matter of distinct and individual consciousness. The heart is the true altar, the sense of penitence and praise and adoration the true sacrifice, the man himself the true priest. The volume of praise or prayer arising from the worshiping assembly is only a collection of units of worship springing from individual hearts and uniting in their ascent to God.

While, however, this is true, the Church of all ages has felt the necessity of public and social worship. There is no direct command in the Scriptures to render such worship, because such command is not necessary. The union of

hearts in the public assembly has ever been a conscious. need. Even in times of the severest persecution such union has been sought. Dens and caverns and out of the way places have been resorted to at the peril of life, where men might pour out common supplications and mingle common praises. Indeed, the life and growth of the Church seem inevitably linked with the practice of social worship. As Dr. Caldwell has shown in the Madison Avenue lectures, * "Worship belongs to the Church as a part of its priestly character and work." It belongs to the Church "as the bond of its fellowship and the organ of its spiritual development and increase." "Worship is a part of that larger function to which Christ has ordained it, of evangelizing the world." "The house of God, with its worship, is necessary to religion." "For the sake of Christianity and of society, purified only by its sanative energies, for the sake of him whose blood sprinkles her altars, whose love inflames her praise, whose salvation is her message to all people, the Church is to stand in this great office of worship, the constituted priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices to God by Jesus Christ." Public worship is, therefore, a duty no less than a privilege of the Church. It is a duty because it is only thus that the Church can best perform its mission of salvation to a dying world. It is a privilege, because by bringing men together in a common act, it confers upon them all the help there is in the union of sympathetic hearts, and gives them the best possible opportunity of confessing and adoring their God and Savior.

But how shall worship be rendered? What are the methods through which the heart shall, express itself, the surroundings in which worship shall clothe itself, the body. by which the inner spirit shall make itself manifest to God and man? Shall an established liturgy be used, in which prescribed prayers and praises are rendered to the exclusion of the voluntary and spontaneous outbursts of the heart? Shall worship call to its aid the appliances of art and archi# Page 291 et seq.