The external world moulds the internal, even as the
internal makes the external. If these things mean little in the
beginning, there is still truth in the assertion of the devotee that
if you practice them they will begin to mean something to you. This is
not merely that a meaning will be self-induced. It is more than that.
They will put us in the volitional attitude, the emotional mood, where
the meaning is able to penetrate. Just as all the world acknowledges
that there is an essential connection between good manners and good
morals, between military discipline and physical courage, so there
is a connection between a devotional service and the gifts of the
spiritual life. Such a service not merely strengthens belief in
the High and Holy One, it has a real office in creating, in making
possible, that belief itself.
We shall sum it all up if we say in one word that the offices of
devotion emphasize the cosmic character of religion. They take us out
of the world of moral theism into the world of a universal theism.
They draw us away from religion in action to religion in itself;
they give us, not the God of this world, but the God who is from
everlasting to everlasting, to whom a thousand years are but as
yesterday when it is past and as a watch in the night. Thus they help
us to make for ourselves an interior refuge into whose precincts
no eye may look, into whose life no other soul may venture.
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