So there are many things that pass to-day as forms of worship, many
ideas connected with worship, which this class of minds cannot heartily
and fully accept. Some of them do not seem to them fitting, as they
look upward towards God. They cannot, for example, believe that God
cares for flattery, cares to sit on his throne, and be told by his
creatures how great and how wonderful he is. They cannot think that he
cares to have presents brought to him, gifts offered on his altar, as
men say. They cannot believe that he really is anxious for many of
these external forms and ceremonies, which seem to the onlooker to
constitute the essential element of much that passes as popular
worship.
And then, on the other hand, man has grown into a sense of dignity. He
has a higher and loftier idea of his own nature and of what is fitting
to a man; and he cannot any longer heartily enter into the meaning of
words which speak of him as a worm of the dust, which seem to him to
intimate that God cares to have him prostrate himself in utter
humiliation, to speak of himself always as a miserable sinner, as one
without any good in him.
Many of these things from the point of view of the man himself no
longer constitute the real conviction, the real feeling of the noblest
hearts; and so there are many who are troubled over this question of
worship, who are not quite sure as to how much spiritual significance
it may any longer retain, not quite sure as to how vital a part it may
play in the development of the religious life of man.
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