Page:The kernel and the husk (Abbott, 1886).djvu/135

Letter 11] not seen this in the columns of a theological journal, I should not have believed it possible that modern superficiality and conventionalism could achieve quite so transparent a shallowness. The sum total of our feelings towards God—more especially our awe for Him—cannot indeed be adequately expressed in the same language which expresses our feelings for men: but that is a very different thing from saying that the former "have nothing to do with" the latter. I believe that a large part of most men's worship consists of a shrinking from an Unknown, the sort of dread that children feel for "the dark." But righteous worship must imply other feelings; and these feelings—some of them at all events—must have names; and whence are the names to be derived but from our feelings towards men and things—towards men, surely, as well as towards things? We must either love God, or hate Him, or be indifferent to Him; we must either trust, or distrust Him. I do not see how the people who would sever worship from all reference to human relations can look upon it as other than a mere homage of the lips or knees, a going to church, and attendance at religious services. Need I say that, when I define worship, I am defining the worship of the heart, not the attitude of those who honour God with their lips but whose heart is far from Him?

Now the attitude of man to God has varied greatly in accordance with their conception of God, according as they have conceived Him to be Moloch, or Apollo, or Jehovah, or the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. In some men worship has been mere terror; in some, it has been a desire to bribe; in some it has been faint gratitude and strong admiration; in some it has been intense awe and reverence. All such forms of worship have been imperfect, and some have been very bad. At the best, none of them have combined all the best and noblest feelings of aspiration which Nature tends to develop in us by means