Our Saviour was not more literally present on the Mount of Beatitudes, than he is present now in the mountain of the Lord's house set apart for his service.

The warrant of the scriptures for the Christian sanctuary meets the demands of our renewed nature. We are so constituted that it is easier to realize the presence of God in some places than in others. And wherever we instinctively recognize his presence, in whatever place vivid and solemn ideas of God are spontaneously and habitually excited, there to us God specially is. If we are accustomed to do certain things in certain places, we do them easier and more pleasantly there than elsewhere. There are habits of thought and feeling, moods of emotion which depend on outward conditions and associations gathered by age and silently hallowing a place of worship. There are styles of building which the mind comes to connect with places of prayer. It is a little thing. But a little thing may be a great help or a great hinderance. A solemn strain of music which is usually heard in devotion, if it falls on the ears of men in the busy streets, will interrupt them and render them thoughtful. It is wise to take advantage of these invisible influences which memory gathers about the sanctuary. Without chrisms and anointings, a hallowed incense is insensibly diffused; and the places which are consecrated by the least interference of our conscious wills may be the most truly sacred.

2. As the spiritual character of Christian worship does not dispense with set times and places, so neither does it abrogate set forms of worship. Spirituality is not measured by the character of the formal rites.

Many suppose simplicity and spirituality are the same thing. But the simple flowers on the platform of the Music Hall in Boston, and the baldness of the service, does not make the worship there more spiritual than the worship in the church of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception. Neither simplicity nor complexity are gauges of spirituality. We cannot measure a feeling by a rule of gold any better

than by a rule of iron; and fresh flowers are as material as wax candles. The offering of prayer in words is no more spiritual than sacrificing a lamb and burning incense. It is a strange mistake to suppose that if worship is simple it is therefore spiritual, and that in proportion as rites multiply spirituality disappears. Dr. Payson would never be guilty of the presumption of imagining that, because he lifted up holy hands, and poured forth vocable sounds of prayer in the name of Christ, he was a more spiritual worshipper than Abraham, the friend of God. The father of the faithful arranged a heap of stones, killed a lamb, and, with careful rites, sprinkled the blood and laid portions of the animal in order, and burnt a sacrifice.

The nature of the rite has nothing to do with the spirituality of the service; this depends wholly on the state of the heart. In all worship material symbols are used, and must be used. Language is a symbol. And though certain symbols seem to us more delicate, less gross, more etherial, approaching nearer to the spiritual, God regards them simply as they express devout feelings. Some of the most spiritual worshippers have had the most complicated rites. Thus it was with patriarchs and prophets. While those who have reduced rites of worship to the fragrance of fading flowers have dissolved the spirit into thin air. Without some formal rites there can be no worship. For worship, in its very idea, is a form. It is an expression of feeling, piety taking to itself a form; the embodiment of spiritual emotions. And the great question is: What is the appropriate expression of pious feeling now among Christians?

3. The forms of spiritual worship vary. They are adapted by God to the progressive changes of society. That which expressed the pious feeling of Abraham would not express the pious feeling of Wilberforce. More than three thousand years are between them; they stood on opposite sides of

1 "The most delicate and fitting form which can be employed, that which approaches nearest to spirit, is speech." — German Theory of Worship, ut supra, p. 790. Approaches nearest. Yes; but how much nearer to Sirius is a man on a hill-top than a man in the valley?

Calvary. There was at first a patriarchal economy: Abel offered his first-fruits, Enoch walked with God, Abraham went to Moriah and sacrificed a lamb. There was an enlargement of this cultus in the Mosaic dispensation. Samuel and David, by divine direction, introduced other changes. Our Saviour came to fulfil the law and the prophets. He took up the ancient economy as it had grown to be, and instituted new rites, very different in important respects, less cumbrous and burdensome. But we make a great mistake if we suppose the gospel worship, because of its simplicity, is more spiritual than that of holy men of old. All the rites of worship which God ordained in the Bible are rites of spiritual worship. They have been precisely adapted to the circumstances of those to whom they were given. And the spiritual worship adapted to us is that which the Holy Spirit authorizes in the Bible; no more and no less.

4. In the New Testament we find certain new sacraments to be observed through all time. But there is no formal ritual of worship, such as the Old Testament contains. And for the reason that a new ritual was not needed. The New Testament joins on to the Old. It takes the Old Testament up into itself, and baptizes it with the name of Christ. Whatever in the old economy is not superseded, whatever is not out of harmony with the new, is of as much force now as ever. Many things had reference to the Jews as a nation. With the extinction of the nation, all this scaffolding fell at once. The sacrificial economy was superseded by the offering of the Lamb of God once for all. There is to be no more sacrifice for sin. With the end of sacrifices there was an end of the priesthood. Circumcision gave place to Christian baptism. But with these changes, which the gospel necessarily makes, and their accompaniments, all the rest remains. Our Saviour did not abrogate the system which he found, and which he indeed had previously framed. He worshipped according to it, and left his disciples to worship thus, substituting certain rites for others. It is

doubtful whether the apostles understood at first that they were no longer to keep the passover. The Lord's supper gradually superseded the old rite. And all other changes were by the spontaneous development of gospel doctrines through the Holy Spirit, modifying the previous cultus.

We are not, therefore, to look in the New Testament alone to see what Christian worship should be. All of the Old Testament not inconsistent with the New is equally important. The gospel takes for granted all it finds ready for it. The spiritual life of the first dispensation is perpetuated. We are not to consult our notions of what is expedient and what is frivolous and unimportant. We are to follow the pattern shown to us in the mount. The great characteristics of the service which is pleasing to God are impressed on the old economy. There are suggestions as to the mode of serving him which we are bound to follow. Reverence for the sabbath and for the sanctuary would be no more obligatory if the New Testament contained express direc tions in regard to them. Services which meet our necessisities, and which are in harmony with ancient forms, and which are nowhere forbidden, are required of us. Concerts for prayer, jubilees of missions, fast days and thanksgivings, answer to similar seasons in olden times. The Christian church festivals are in place of the Jewish sabbath and pentecost, and the like. The Jews were bound by special ordinance what ones to observe, and how. We are bound by the same Spirit to observe some; but, within certain limits, we are left free to choose what ones, and how to keep them.

5. The danger to be guarded against is twofold: making too much of forms, as though that was devotion, and sweeping them away, as though that was spirituality. Superstition and scepticism are simply opposite poles of rationalism. And rationalism in worship judges everything by what it is supposed the necessities of the soul or the reason of the thing demands. Thus, instead of binding themselves by the letter and spirit of the Bible, men frame modes of wor

ship according to their taste. Whatever conduces to the beauty of the service, and is fitted to impress the imagination, whatever is serviceable and has gained a place, though it be contrary to the essence of the gospel, is made a part of worship. On the other hand, the sceptic rejects every rite and service which does not commend itself to him as useful, or to which he does not happen to be accustomed. No matter that God authorized it, or the like to it. "That was the Old Testament!" As though God authorized in the Old Testament anything which we are entitled to pronounce frivolous and absurd. "True," says the sceptic, "the Jews were commanded to observe such ceremonies, and were held strictly to forms. But it is not safe. It savors of superstition. It is apt to be perverted." As though God allowed superstitious practices to the Jews; as though he did not see how good things might be perverted. And. so the sceptic sweeps away what his judgment does not

approve.

We are not to presume to honor God by services which his word interdicts or abrogates. But in guarding against this, which has seemed heretofore the chief danger, we are not to swing into the opposite extreme and neglect such rites as he has ordained, and has not abolished. We are not to demand an explanation of everything. It may be inex plicable to Abraham why God bids him go to a distant mountain to offer sacrifice. One place seems as good as another. But he does well to obey. The temple will one day stand on that mountain, the Son of God take the place of Isaac, and Abraham become the father of the faithful. The apostle Paul may not see the advantage of washing and shaving his head, and performing a vow. But it is not superstition for him to obey God in such a way. The Scotch Covenanters at Cambuslang may not comprehend the full significance of the sacraments. But they observe them because they are divinely ordained, and they do well to sing psalms and break bread and pour out wine in joyful remembrance of the Lamb of God whose blood was shed for man on Calvary.