Page:The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained.djvu/24

18 Now since the tendency of all worship is to bring the soul of the worshiper into sympathy with and likeness to the Being or his conception of the Being worshiped, therefore it is of primary importance that we have a correct idea of that Being's character. No other idea exerts so tremendous an influence on our own character, as the idea we habitually cherish of the supreme Object of worship. People do not, as many imagine, worship the same Being merely because they call Him by the same name. In reality each one worships the God that he inwardly looks up to or thinks of. A thousand persons may agree in calling the Object of their worship, Jehovah, God or Lord; yet their conceptions of his character may differ so widely, that it may with truth be said that each of them worships a different God. The same name may be, to each of these different minds, the sign of widely different qualities; for the kind of God one thinks of, is the kind he worships. It becomes, then, a matter of supreme moment what idea we form and habitually cherish of the Divine Being or his character. If our thought on this central doctrine is wrong, it can hardly be right on any subordinate ones. As the navigator on the pathless ocean determines his geographical position by an observation of the sun, so does each one's intellectual apprehension or