Chap. III.]

DUTY OF WORSHIPPING GOD.

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heaven rejects, with indignation, every attempt to entertain itwith jests, calculated to degrade or deride subjects which itnever recollects but with seriousness and anxiety. Nothing butstupidity, or the most frivolous dissipation of thought, can makeeven the inconsiderate. forget the supreme importance of everything which relates to the expectation of a future existence.Whilst the infidel mocks at the superstitions of the vulgar, as hechooses to consider them, insults over their credulous fears, theirchildish errors, or fantastic rites, it does not occur to him toobserve, that the most preposterous device, by which the weakestdevotee ever believed he was securing the happiness of a futurelife, is more rational than unconcern about it. Upon this sub-ject, nothing is so absurd as indifference ; no folly so absurd asthoughtlessness and levity. *

CHAPTER III.

THE DUTY OF WORSHIPPING GOD.

There is a distinction between reverencing and worshippingGod. Both are external duties, and God is the immediate objectof both ; the distinction between them is, that the one is nega-tive, the other positive ; the one consists in abstaining from someimpious act, the other in performing some act of piety. When,from a sense of duty to God, we rest on Sunday during a jour-ney, we perform a duty of reverence ; when, from the samemotive, we attend church on Sunday, we perform an act ofworship, f

The special object of worshipping God, is, to keep up thatreverence for him in the mind, which cannot be preserved with-out habitual attendance on some external service, by which ahabit of devotion and reverence, and their consequent moralinfluences may be maintained. The formation, preservation,and strengthening of this habit of devotion and reverence for

* Paley’s Moral and Political Philosophy, p. 270.

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f Idem, p. 230.