Lord, make me to know Thee aright that I may more and more love and
enjoy and possess Thee."
One cannot conclude these examples of worshipful expression without
quoting a prayer of Augustine, which is, I suppose, the most perfect
brief petition in all the Christian literature of devotion and which
gives the great psychologist's perception of the various steps in
the unification of the soul with the eternal Spirit through sublime
emotion.
"Grant, O God, that we may desire Thee, and desiring Thee, seek Thee,
and seeking Thee, find Thee, and finding Thee, be satisfied with Thee
forever."
I think one may see, then, why worship as distinct from preaching,
or the hearing of preaching, is the first necessity of the religious
life. It unites us as nothing else can do with God the whole and God
the transcendent. The conception of God is the sum total of human
needs and desires harmonized, unified, concretely expressed. It is the
faith of the worshiper that this concept is derived from a real and
objective Being in some way corresponding to it. No one can measure
the influence of such an idea when it dominates the consciousness of
any given period. It can create and set going new desires and habits,
it can minish and repress old ones, because this idea carries, with
its transcendent conception, the dynamic quality which belongs to
the idea of perfect power.
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