Worship # 14

Worship: Its Priority, Principles, and Practice (continued)

I proceed, in the last place, to show some tests  which our public worship should be tried.

This is a point of vast importance, and one which every professing Christian should look fairly in the face. Too many are apt to cut the know of all difficulties about the subject before us, by referring to their own feelings. They will tell us that they are not theologians, that they do not pretend to understand the difference between one school of divinity and another. But they do know that the worship in which they take part makes them feel so much better, that they cannot doubt it is all right. I am not disposed to let such people turn away from the subject of this paper quite so easily. I cannot forget that religious feelings are very deceitful things. There is a sort of gentle animal excitement produced in some minds by hearing religious music and seeing religious spectacles, which is not true devotion at all. While it lasts, such excitement is very strong and very contagious; but it soon comes and soon goes, and leaves no permanent impression behind it. It is a mere sensuous animal influence, which even a Romanist may feel at seasons, and yet remain a Romanist both in doctrine and practice.

1. True spiritual worship will affect a man's heart and conscience. It will make him feel more keenly the sinfulness of sin, and his own particular personal corruption. It will deepen his humility. It will render him more jealously careful over his inward life. False public worship, like liquor-drinking and opium-eating, will every year produce weaker impressions. True spiritual worship, like wholesome food, will strengthen him who uses it, and make him grow inwardly every year.

2. True spiritual worship will draw a man into close communion with Jesus Christ Himself. It will lift him far above churches, and ordinances, and  ministers. It will make him hunger and thirst after a sight of the King. The more he hears, and reads, and prays, and praises, the more he will feel that nothing but Christ himself will feed the life of his soul, and that heart communion with him is "meat indeed and drink indeed." The false worshiper in the time of need will  turn to external helps, to ministers, ordinances, and sacraments. The true worshiper will turn instinctively to Christ by simple faith, just as the compass needle turns to the pole.

3. True spiritual worship will continually extend a man's spiritual knowledge. It will annually give bone, and sinew, and muscle, and firmness to his religion. A true worshiper will every year know more of self, and God, and heaven, and duty, and doctrine, and practice, and experience. His religion is a living thing and will grow. A false worshiper will never get beyond the old carnal principles and elements of his theology. He will annually go round and round like a horse in a mill, and though laboring much will never get forward. His religion is a dead thing, and cannot increase and multiply.

~J. C. Ryle~

(continued with # 15)