74

OUR RELATION TO THE DEITY.

[Part I.

God and divine things, together with instruction in the doctrinesand duties of Christianity, are the aim and end of divine worship,and in them its public and private benefit consists.

This subject is an important one, and comprises, — the natu-ralness and reasonableness of divine worship, private and public ;— the subject matter of which, prayer, thanksgiving, and praiseought to consist; — a review of the part of public worship designedspecially for instruction, consisting of the reading of the Scrip-tures, preaching, and catechetical instruction ;— and an illustra-tion of the benefits, public and private, of divine worship, whenattended with diligence and with a suitable temper and spirit.

1. The naturalness and reasonableness of divine worship, pri-vate and public. A conviction of the existence and influence,as has before been said, of “a power above us,” which guidesour destinies, to which we are responsible, to which we arebound equally by duty and interest to have regard, whose favorwe may gain and whose displeasure we may propitiate, by someexertions which we may use and some sacrifices which we maymake, seems, in all ages and among all nations, to have beenirresistibly forced on the understandings of mankind. * Underthe influence of this natural conviction, men have always raisedtheir minds in prayer to some superior Being, or beings, as isattested by the literary remains of every nation under heaven. Itis true that this natural sentiment has often been greatly obscuredby ignorance, by neglect, and by great misuse and perversion oftalents ; but no debasement of savage life, of false religion, oreven of settled habits of sin, formed, cherished, and persevered inamidst the bright shining of the Gospel itself, has been able en-tirely to suppress and drive it from the human mind.

Accordingly, the literature of Greek and Roman antiquity,and the Hindoo and Chinese literature of the present day, arefilled with prayers and thanksgivings to the various deities whichthey acknowledged. These are the more cultivated forms ofheathenism, but its ruder forms all contain evidences of the samenatural sentiment and feeling. This may be called natural piety ;and however obscured and perverted, it is still good proof of thenatural conviction described by St. Paul, and of the natural sen-

Romans i. 20.