They had not only believed that God was to be
worshipped after these external fashions, but that there was some
special place, not only where it was easier to think of him, but where
he demanded the offering should be brought. He said to the woman at the
well: You think it is Mount Gerizim where the people ought to worship,
and the Jews think it is Mount Moriah; but I say unto you that neither
in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem shall men worship the Father. God
is spirit, the universal spirit, every place a temple, every spot
hallowed, if only those that worship him do so in spirit and in truth.
You see, then, how up these stairways of gradual approach the human
race, in the person of its highest and finest representatives, has
climbed, how near it has come to the spiritual ideal of God and the
spiritual thought of that which he requires at our hands.
Is worship, then, so far as external form is concerned, to pass away?
By no manner of means, as I think. As you analyze any one of these old
primitive acts of worship, no matter how crude, no matter how cruel,
how bloody, how repulsive it may be to-day from the outlook of our
higher civilization, you will note that it has in it an element which,
I believe, is permanent, and can never be outgrown. Whatever else there
is, there is always the sense of a Presence, Invisible, mighty, high,
and, from the point of view of the worshipper, holy and set apart.
There is always the feeling of being in the shadow of the high and
lofty One who inhabiteth eternity.
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