SERMON V.
EXTRACT I.
Worship.
"None can worship him [the almighty Creator] till all these unruly passions, all these disturbances and troubles, that naturally attend men and women in their natural state, are all brought down into entire subjection to the divine will, and until there is a complete sense of his greatness, and of our nothingness.—And it is my earnest desire that we may individually labour after this stillness; for this is the travail that ought always to attend our minds when thus assembled together." pp. 106, 107.
To imagine that silence and stillness are essential to true worship, would be a great error. Our Lord Jesus Christ and his Apostles give no support to such a doctrine. Whatever advantage there may be in this mode of worship, we must remember that in the declaration, "The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth," our Lord neither prescribes nor intimates any particular mode.
It is of great moment that we should be aware, that the incapacity to worship God lies not so much in the disturbed state of the mind, as in the unregenerate state of the heart, in which state neither stillness nor activity avail any thing.
