Chapter 13

All the way through the Old Testament, in the history of the Hebrew people, you trace these same ideas that you find in the life of almost all the other nations of the world. It was only a step beyond this to the idea of presenting gifts to God, no matter what the nature of that gift might be. And, as men came to make him these sacred offerings, they came also to believe and in the most natural way in the world that, the more costly the gift, the more likely it was to be accepted on the part of its sublime recipient.

So human sacrifices arose; for there could be no more sacred gift than for a man to offer his own child or his own wife to God. The gods were looked upon as sometimes demanding these tremendous sacrifices as the conditions of their mercy or their care. I refer you for illustration to one of the most striking and touching of Tennyson's poems. I think it is entitled "The Victim." There had been famine in the land, and the priests have announced that they have learned that the gods demand as an offering that which is most sacred and most dear to the heart of the king; and the question is as to whether it is his son, his boy, or his wife. They think it must be the boy, because he was the one that would continue the kingly line; but the wife detects the gladness of her husband when he sees that the boy is to be selected, and knows by that sense of relief that passes over his face that the priests have made a mistake, and that she herself is to be the victim. And so, in her love for him and for the people, she rushes upon the sacrificial knife.

All these ideas, you see, are perfectly natural in certain stages of human development, logically reasoned out in view of their thought of the gods and of their relations to them and of what these gods must desire at their hands. It is not only among the very early beliefs that you find these ideas controlling the thought and action of men. Study the ancient classical times as they are reflected in the Iliad, in the Odyssey, or in Virgil's Aeneid, and you will find that the gods were very human in all their feelings, their thoughts, their passions. As, in the Old Testament, Yahweh is reported to have been a jealous God, not willing that respect should be paid to anybody but himself, so you find the old Greek and Roman deities very jealous as to what were regarded as their rights, as to what the people must pay to them; and, if they are angry, they can be appeased if an offering rare and costly enough be brought by the worshipper. You can buy their favor; you can ward off their anger, if only you can offer them something which is precious enough so that they are ready to accept it at the worshipper's hands.

These are not merely Old Testament ideas, nor only pagan ideas. Some years ago, when I was in Rome, I visited among others one of the many churches dedicated to Mary under one name or another; and there was a statue of the Virgin by the altar, and it impressed me very much to see that it was loaded down with gifts. Every place on the statue itself to which anything could be attached, anything on the altar around it, was weighted down with gold chains, with jewels, with precious gifts of every kind. These had been brought as thank-offerings, expressions of worship, or pledges connected with a petition, because I have brought thee this gift, have mercy, do this for me which I need.

So these old ideas are vital still, and live on in the modern world. And yet modern and magnificent are those utterances of the old Hebrew prophet, who had so completely outgrown the common customs even of his time, when he represents God as saying that he is weary of all these external offerings. He says: I do not want the cattle brought to my temples. Those that wander on a thousand hills are already mine. If I were hungry, I would not ask thee. He does not want the rivers of oil poured out. What does he want? The old prophet says, What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God? And some of the later writers caught a glimpse of the same spiritual truth when they said, Not burnt- offerings, not calves of a year old; when they cry out, Shall I bring the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? No, it is a broken and contrite heart, a heart sorry for its sin, a heart consecrating itself to righteousness and truth, this inner, spiritual worship.

The prophets, you see, were climbing up to that magnificent ideal so finely set up by Jesus as reported in the Gospel from which I read our lesson this morning. 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. There is always the sense of uplooking, of worship, in the higher sense of that term. Always, at any rate, the germ of these; and this, it seems to me, we may be sure and certain, however it may clothe itself in the future, shall never pass away.

I wish now, if there are any who think it is not befitting the greatness, the nobleness of man that he should bow himself in the presence of the highest, humiliate himself, if you choose to use that term, in acts of worship, I wish now, I say, to consider worship under two or three aspects, and see what it means. And, in the first place, I ask you to note that the ability to worship is always the measure of the rank of a being, it is the test and the standard of greatness.

As you look over the animal world, which one of them are we accustomed to think of as coming the nearest to man? What one do we love to have most with us, to associate most with our joys, with the peace of our homes? Is it not the dog? And as you examine the dog, study carefully his nature and characteristics, do you not note that there is in his nature a hint, a suggestion, of that which is the root of all worship? The dog is the one animal with which man is accustomed familiarly to associate himself, who looks up with an incipient reverence, love, almost worship, to his master. And it is this quality in the dog that enables him to look up, and, however dimly, feel the life of some one that is above him, that lifts him into our society, and makes us feel this tenderness of heart-kinship with that which is finest in his nature.

And man is man simply because he is able to look above himself. The old Greeks had an anticipation of that idea when they called man anthropos; for the meaning of the word is the upward-looker. As in imagination you go back and down to the time when man first appeared, developed from the lower life which preceded him, the first thing you can think about him as human is the opening of his eyes in wonder, the lifting of his face in curiosity and question, and the birth of adoration in his soul. This is that which made him man.

You go and study the lowest type of barbaric life to-day; and you will find that the barbarian has very little curiosity as compared with the civilized man. You will find that it is very difficult to astonish him with anything. He does not wonder. He takes everything for granted. He does not see clearly and deeply enough to appreciate the marvel. Let me illustrate from a specimen of barbaric life itself. A few years ago the chief of an Indian tribe was brought from the plains of the West to visit Washington. The idea was to impress him as much as possible with the idea of our civilization, so that he might report it to his people when he went home. After they had crossed the Mississippi on their way to the West, the gentleman in whose care he was travelling asked the chief what the one thing which he had seen during his trip was which had impressed him the most; and he said at once the St. Louis bridge. But his companion said, Are you not astonished at the Capitol of Washington? "Yes," he said, "but my people can pile stones on top of each other; but they cannot make a cobweb of steel hang in the air."

You see how that perception lifted him above the average level of his people? He was showing his capacity for higher and nobler civilization. It is just this ability in the man to wonder, to see something to wonder at, to worship, to admire, which lifts him one grade higher than that of the average level of his tribe. So that which makes man a man is the capacity in him to admire. All admiration is the essence, the root, of worship. And, the more things a man admires, the greater and nobler type of man he is seen to be. If he can admire music, if he can admire painting, if he can admire sculpture, if he can admire poetry, if he can admire literature of every kind, if he can admire grand architecture, the beautiful monuments of the world, we say, Here is a large, all-round type of man. We estimate his dignity, his greatness, by the capacity that he shows for worship in its lower type; for worship is simply looking up with admiration.

There is another quality about this worship that I wish to speak of. It is the power that is capable of transforming a man, making him over into the likeness of that which he admires. You find the man without this capacity, and you know it is hopeless to appeal to him, hopeless to set up ideals, hopeless to place before him enticing examples. There is nothing in him to which these things appeal. Take Alexander the Great. It is said he carried around with him a copy of the Iliad, and that Achilles was his ideal of a hero. Do you not see how this admiration transformed the life of the young king, and made him after the type of that which he admired? It does not make any difference what this special admiration may be. Let a man admire Beethoven, and he will cultivate instinctively the qualities that make the beauty and greatness of Beethoven's character and the wonders of his career.

This ideal may be in a book, it may be embodied in fiction. I have liked always, either on the walls of my room or on the walls of my heart, to have certain portraits of persons whom I have loved, who are no longer living; and they are to me constant stimulus. They speak to me by day, and in my dreams at night their eyes follow me, and seem to look into my soul; and in their presence I could not do a mean, an unmanly thing. I love, I reverence, I worship these lofty ideals. And the quality of these characters filters down through and permeates the thought and the life.

You remember how the other aspect of this thought is illustrated by Shakspere. He says, "My nature is subdued To what it works in, like the dyer's hand." If that with which you keep company, that you admire, is below you, it degrades; if it is above you, it lifts. In any case you are transformed, shaped into the likeness of that which you admire.

There is another aspect of this close akin to that which I have just been dealing with. It is only the worshipper who has in him any promise, any possibility, of growth. Whether it is the individual or the nation, it makes no difference. If you find no capacity to admire that which is above and beyond you, then there is no hope of progress. Take the young man who thinks he has exhausted the possibilities of the world, who has reached the stage, who prides himself on not being surprised, not being over whelmed, not admiring anything. The careful outside observer knows that, instead of having exhausted the possibilities and greatness and wonders of the universe, he has simply exhausted himself.

The man who knows how full the world is of that which is beautiful and great and true and noble walks through the universe with his head bared and bowed, and feels, as did Moses when standing in the presence of the burning bush, that he ought to take off his shoes from his feet, for the place where he is standing is holy ground. Wherever you are standing in this universe, which is full of God from star to dust particle, is holy ground; and, if you do not feel it, if you are not touched, if you are not bowed, if you are not thrilled with wonder, it is defect in you, and not lack of God.

If the musician admires his great predecessors and strives to emulate them; if the painter in the presence of the Sistine Madonna feels lifted and touched, so that he never can be content with poor work again; if the sculptor is ready to bend his knees in the presence of the Venus of Melos, as he sees her standing at the end of the long gallery in the Louvre; if the lover of his kind admires John Howard, and can never be content unless he is doing something for his fellow- men again; if we can be touched by lives like Clara Barton's, like Florence Nightingale's, like Dorothea Dix's, like the great and consecrated ones of the earth; if in any department of life we can be lifted, humbled, thrilled, at the same time with the thought of the greatness and glory and beauty that are above and beyond us, then there is hope of growth, then there is life that can come to something fine and noble in the future.

I wish, in the light of these illustrations of what worship means, to note the thought that a great many men conscientious, earnest, simple who have never been accustomed to think of themselves as religious, and perhaps would deny it if a friend suggested to them that they had in them the possibilities of worship, that perhaps they are worshippers, even if they know it not. A great many persons have thrown away the common ideals of worship, and perhaps have settled down to the idea that they are not worshippers at all, while all the time the substance and the beauty and the glory of worship are in their daily lives and always in their hearts. I want to suggest two or three grades of worship, to show that this worship climbs; and I want to call attention to the fact that on the lowest grade it is worship of God just the same as on the highest, that all worship or admiration for truth, for beauty, for good, wherever, however, manifested, is really worship of God, whether we think of it or call it by that name or not, because they all are manifestations of God.

Take the man who is touched and lifted by natural beauty, the sense of natural power; the man who loves the woods, who turns and stands to see the glory of a sunset, who is lifted by tides of emotion as he hears the surf beat on the shore, who feels bowed in the presence of the wide night sky of stars, who is humbled at the same time that he is uplifted in the presence of the mountains, who is touched by all natural scenes of beauty and peace and glory. Are not these men in their degree worshippers?

Take the feeling that is expressed in those beautiful lines of Byron. We do not think of Byron as a religious nature, but certainly he had in him the heart of worship when he could write such thoughts as these:

"'Tis midnight. On the mountains brown The cold, round moon shines deeply down; Blue roll the waters; blue the sky Seems like an ocean hung on high, Bespangled with those isles of light, So wildly, spiritually bright.

Whoever looked upon them shining And turned to earth without repining, Nor wished for wings to flee away And mix with their eternal ray?"

And Wordsworth says he feels a Presence that "Disturbs him with the joy of elevated thought, A sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused."

And so you may run all through the poets, these simply as hints, specimens, every one of them worshippers, touched by the beauty, glory, uplift of the natural world.

And then pass to the next stage, and come to the worship of the human, to the admiration of the highest and finest qualities that are manifested in the lives of men and women. Who is there that is not touched and thrilled by some story of heroic action, of heroic self- sacrifice, of consecration to duty in the face of danger and death? And no matter what this manifestation of human goodness may be, if you can be thrilled by it and lifted by it, then you have taken another step up this ladder of worship which leads you into the very presence chamber of the Divine.

Let a boy read the life of Lincoln, see his earnest thirst for knowledge, the sacrifice he was willing to pay for it, his consecration to his ideals of truth, the transparent honesty of the man, the supreme contempt with which he could look down upon anything poor or mean or low, the firmness and simplicity with which he assumes high office, the faithfulness, the unassuming devotion, that he carries into the fulfilment of the trust. Take him all the way through, study his character and admire, and you are a worshipper of that which is divine.

So in the case of Jesus, the supreme soul of history in its consecration to the Father, its simple trust in the divine love, its superiority to fear, to question, to death. When we bow ourselves in the presence of the Nazarene, we are not worshipping another God. We are worshipping his Father and our Father as lie shines in the face of Jesus, as he illumines and beautifies his life, as he makes glorious the humble pathways of Galilee, and so casts a reflected glory over the humblest pathways any of us may be called upon to tread.

The next step in our ascent brings us to the conscious worship of God himself. We cannot grasp the divine idea. The finite cannot measure or outline the infinite; and so, when we say God, we mean only the grandest ideal that we can frame, that reaches on towards, but can never adequately express the Deity. And so we worship this thought, this ideal, growing as our capacity develops, advancing as the race advances, and ever leading us Godward, as when we follow a ray of light we are travelling towards its source. And the attitude of our souls in the presence of this which is divine is truest worship. The humility of it, the exaltation of it, is beautifully phrased in two or three lines which I wish to repeat to you from Browning's Saul: "I but open my eyes, and perfection, no more and no less, In the kind I imagined, full-fronts me, and God is seen God In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and the clod. And, thus looking within and around me, I ever renew (With that stoop of the soul which in bending upraises it, too), As by each new obeisance in spirit I climb to his feet!"

Here is the significance of the thought I had in mind at the opening. We talk about humbling ourselves. When we can bend with reverence in the presence of that which is above us, the very bending is exaltation; for it indicates the capacity to appreciate, to admire, to adore. Thus we climb up into the ability to worship God, the infinite Spirit, our Father, in spirit and in truth.

Now to raise one moment the question suggested near the opening, Are forms of worship to pass away? The reply to this seems to me perfectly clear. Those forms which sprang out of and are fitted to only lower ideals of worship, ideals which humanity outgrows, these must be left behind, or else they must be transformed, and filled with a new and higher meaning. But forms will always remain. But note one thing: they sometimes say that we Unitarians are too cold, and do not have form enough. You will see that, the higher men rise intellectually, the less there is always of outward expression.

For example, before men were able to speak with any large vocabulary, they eked out their meaning by all kinds of motions and gestures. But the most highly cultivated men to- day, in their conversation, are the ones who get the least excited and have the least recourse to gestures, because they are capable of expressing the highest, finest, and most varied thoughts by the elaborate power of speech which they have developed. And perhaps the highest and finest worship of the world will not be that which has the most elaborate ceremonial and ritual; but it will have adequate and fitting ceremonial and ritual, because it will naturally seek to express in some external way that which it feels.

I sometimes wish and perhaps you will pardon me for saying it here and now that we Unitarians were a little less afraid of adequate posture and gesture in our acts of public worship. God is, indeed, everywhere as much as he is here; but this is the place we have specially consecrated to thinking about him and to going through our stated forms of worship. And if, when you enter the house of a friend, you take off your hat, you bow the head, it seems to me it would be especially fitting to do it, when one enters a Christian church. And, in the attitude of prayer, I wish that all might find it in their hearts to sit with bended brow and closed eyes as in the presence of the Supreme, shutting out the common, the outside world, and trying to realize what it means to come consciously to the feet of the eternal One.

I love these simple, fitting, external manifestations of the worshipful spirit; and, if we do not substitute them for the worship, and think we worship when we bend the knee, this appropriate expression of the spirit, or feeling, it seems to ought to help cultivate the feeling and the spirit, and make it easier for us to be conscious of the presence of the Divine.

We are men, then, in the highest sense of the term, only as we are worshippers. And the more worshipful we are, in high and true sense of that word, the nobler and higher manhood, and the grander the possibilities in us of de intellectual, moral, spiritual growth.

Let us, then, cultivate the admiring, the wondering, the worshipful attitude of heart and mind, and recognize on lowest steps of this ladder that lifts to God, the presence of the same divine power and beauty and glory as that which we see clearly on the highest, and know that always, when we are worshipping any manifestation of God, we are shipping Him who is spirit, in spirit and in truth.

When on some strain of music Our thoughts are wafted high; When, touched with tender pity, Kind teardrops dim the eye; When thrilled with scenes of grandeur, Or moved to deeds of love, Do we not give thee worship, O God in heaven above? For Thou art all life's beauty, And Thou art all its good: By Thy tides are we lifted To every lofty mood. Whatever good is in us, Whatever good we see, And every high endeavor, Are they not all from Thee?

MORALITY NATURAL, NOT STATUTORY.