Page:Two Sermons on the Duty and Joy of Frequent Public Worship.djvu/24

12 think it difficult to feel the blessing of such frequent attendance at the "House of Prayer."

I shall endeavour, then, now to explain this.

Now of course no one can feel any wish for public services who has no pleasure in religion, or the life of faith, generally. There are men, we know, who are satisfied with this world, and its business and pleasures; and desire nothing more. Such persons may, it is true, attend public worship, and go through religious practices, but it is as a matter of principle, done by rule, because they think it is their duty; it is not in them the fruit of any inward longing after closer communion with God, or any pleasure or refreshment which they feel in the thought of a better and a holier world than this. All fervent expressions in the Psalms or elsewhere, such as those of the Psalm from which my text is taken, which speak of a real "hunger and thirst" after worship of any kind, must be strange to such persons. "What do they mean?" they might say,—"all this is mere enthusiasm. Acts of devotion are right for Sundays, or for some small part of Sundays, and it may be, and we believe is, our duty to say our prayers every day; but as for more than that, as for any delight in praying, or any deep and heartfelt pleasure in finding ourselves in the midst of a number of fellow-Christians, addressing their God and Saviour, or singing His praises, we do not know what it means," Religion, as I have said, is to such persons a matter altogether of principle, not of pleasure or impulse. Now, of course, to them, not only my text and the Psalm from which it is taken, but also all other warm expressions of piety, must seem utterly strange. It is not only public worship, but all worship, which is to such persons a weariness;—a duty to be got through, but not a well-spring of refreshment; not "a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable."

But to other men, public worship, and all worship, is a delight and a refreshment in the midst of the toils and the sorrows of this world. Yes, there are some