DIVINE WORSHIP
‘Let all the angels of God worship Him.’
Worship, true worship, in the sense of bowing down before a present Saviour, in the sense of adoring a new-born King, this is a tribute which Christ claims from His servants above all others on the day of His birth. They are the Birthday gifts we are bound to offer Him.
I. The idea of worship as the special tribute of Christmas Day seems strikingly brought out in this Epistle. How full of strange contrasts is our holy religion. How amazing are the apparent contradictions! Surely it is easy, not difficult, as many seem to find it, to understand how the mysteries of religion do not commend themselves to men who have not faith; for, verily, great is the faith that is requisite to remove the mountains of difficulties which present themselves during the Christian pilgrim’s progress from darkness to light, from doubt to certitude, from a timid, hesitating acceptance of the truth to a perfect and implicit faith! Oh faith, strain thy vision; oh imagination, expand thy powers; oh weak human intellect, agonise; mortal brain, torture thyself in striving in vain to realise that this babe, wrapped by its own mother’s hands in the carefully provided swaddling clothes, this babe, born in this wretched shed, lying sweet and peaceful in this bed of straw, is the Mighty God, the Prince of Peace, of Whom it has long years ago been forespoken in sacred prophecy, ‘Let all the angels of God worship Him!’
II. Worship Him?—‘Never!’ said the proudly robed and austere-looking Pharisee. ‘Never,’ said the highly cultured and gifted philosopher, Saul of Tarsus. ‘Never,’ says the Man of Society of to-day, our modern Pharisee, who performs punctiliously all the duties which respectability requires of him, even to the hearing an occasional sermon by a select preacher in some great abbey or cathedral, but who will never worship One in Whom he sees no more than the ‘Babe of Bethlehem,’ or a titular ‘King of the Jews.’ ‘Never,’ says the profound Freethinker of an enlightened century, whose lofty mind revolts from a form of worship which he regards as the childish pageantry of an effete and attenuated superstition.
—Rev. J. H. Buchanan.
(SECOND OUTLINE)
OUR DEBT TO GOD
Worship is what we owe to God and what we give so little of. We are ready to hear about God, to read about Christ, to pray, maybe, for blessings and graces and forgiveness. But to hear about God is not to worship Him. To read His Word is not to worship Him. Even to pray to Him is not really worship in its proper sense.
I. Worship is the homage of the whole man; the bowing down of body, soul, and spirit in an act of adoration to Him as King and Lord and God. We come to church to hear about God and to pray to God—but how little does the thought come into our heads of giving anything to God. I do not mean the giving of alms. I mean the giving of worship. The idea does not cross our minds that we owe God a duty—once a week and on certain great festivals to attend His Court and there pay Him what He demands of us. He is there indeed to instruct us, and to redress our wrongs, and to hear our petitions. But He is there principally to receive from us that worship which He demands of all his rational creatures as a right, and which He will exact.
II. See how it was when Christ was born into this world.—Men did not flock around Him and adore Him. Therefore God the Father summoned the Angel Host to prostrate themselves in adoration before the little Child that rested on its Mother s knee. ‘When He bringeth in His firstbegotten into the world, he saith. Let all the angels of God worship Him.’
III. The Church calls on her children to come and adore God, and give Him the homage which is His due. ‘Oh come let us worship, and fall down, and kneel before the Lord our Maker.’ She does not bid you come and sit down and lounge about and listen; she calls to an act of homage. ‘Let us fall down, and kneel.’ To kneel is to do homage with the body.
IV. But that is not sufficient. The mind must do homage also.—It must be drawn in from worldly and frivolous thoughts, and must be fixed on God, and think of Him with reverence. The soul also must be directed to God in adoration, kindled with love, burning with desire; it must turn towards God in an attitude of mingled fear and fervour.
So only will true worship be given. Worship must be made up of the devotion of body, soul, and mind to God.
Rev. S. Baring-Gould.