Page:Two Sermons on the Duty and Joy of Frequent Public Worship.djvu/16

4 earth, or in rooms, "with doors shut for fear of the Jews." Under these circumstances, how ready would men of our time have been to dispense with public assemblies altogether! They would have said, "What is the importance of our meeting together? Will it not do as well if we Bay our prayers in private? Why expose ourselves to danger, merely for the sake of public worship, when private prayers will answer every purpose?" So, perhaps, some might think. But against all such notions the Spirit of God warns them. "Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhort one another, and so much the more as ye see the day approaching."

"The day," here probably means that great day of trial, and of the coming of God to judgment upon the Jewish nation, which, as the whole Epistle shows, they were expecting daily. The greater your trial, says the inspired writer, the nearer any great day of trial, and of God's visitation, so much the more "assemble yourselves together." Nothing can more clearly show that the Spirit of God teaches that there is some special blessing promised to Christians meeting together for the worship of God. It is so clearly a great duty, that it must be practised, even at the risk of grave dangers; even in the face of terrible persecutions. And accordingly, we have set before us in the Word of God many great examples of regular and frequent attendance upon the public worship of God.

First, there is the example of our Lord Himself. Perhaps you might have expected that he would not have attended the services in the Temple, or in the Synagogue. Our Blessed Lord came, it is sometimes said, to preach a spiritual religion. He taught that as "God is a Spirit, they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth"; and that, under the Gospel, it was not to be at Jerusalem only, or on Mount Gerizim, but in every place that God was to be worshipped. One of the chief