Part 12 (1/2)

There is always the feeling of being in the shadow of the high and lofty One who inhabiteth eternity. There is always the sense of uplooking, of wors.h.i.+p, in the higher sense of that term. Always, at any rate, the germ of these; and this, it seems to me, we may be sure and certain, however it may clothe itself in the future, shall never pa.s.s away.

I wish now, if there are any who think it is not befitting the greatness, the n.o.bleness of man that he should bow himself in the presence of the highest, humiliate himself, if you choose to use that term, in acts of wors.h.i.+p, I wish now, I say, to consider wors.h.i.+p under two or three aspects, and see what it means. And, in the first place, I ask you to note that the ability to wors.h.i.+p is always the measure of the rank of a being, it is the test and the standard of greatness.

As you look over the animal world, which one of them are we accustomed to think of as coming the nearest to man? What one do we love to have most with us, to a.s.sociate most with our joys, with the peace of our homes? Is it not the dog? And as you examine the dog, study carefully his nature and characteristics, do you not note that there is in his nature a hint, a suggestion, of that which is the root of all wors.h.i.+p?

The dog is the one animal with which man is accustomed familiarly to a.s.sociate himself, who looks up with an incipient reverence, love, almost wors.h.i.+p, to his master. And it is this quality in the dog that enables him to look up, and, however dimly, feel the life of some one that is above him, that lifts him into our society, and makes us feel this tenderness of heart-kins.h.i.+p with that which is finest in his nature.

And man is man simply because he is able to look above himself. The old Greeks had an antic.i.p.ation of that idea when they called man anthropos; for the meaning of the word is the upward-looker. As in imagination you go back and down to the time when man first appeared, developed from the lower life which preceded him, the first thing you can think about him as human is the opening of his eyes in wonder, the lifting of his face in curiosity and question, and the birth of adoration in his soul.

This is that which made him man.

You go and study the lowest type of barbaric life to-day; and you will find that the barbarian has very little curiosity as compared with the civilized man. You will find that it is very difficult to astonish him with anything. He does not wonder. He takes everything for granted. He does not see clearly and deeply enough to appreciate the marvel. Let me ill.u.s.trate from a specimen of barbaric life itself. A few years ago the chief of an Indian tribe was brought from the plains of the West to visit Was.h.i.+ngton. The idea was to impress him as much as possible with the idea of our civilization, so that he might report it to his people when he went home. After they had crossed the Mississippi on their way to the West, the gentleman in whose care he was travelling asked the chief what the one thing which he had seen during his trip was which had impressed him the most; and he said at once the St. Louis bridge.

But his companion said, Are you not astonished at the Capitol of Was.h.i.+ngton? ”Yes,” he said, ”but my people can pile stones on top of each other; but they cannot make a cobweb of steel hang in the air.”

You see how that perception lifted him above the average level of his people? He was showing his capacity for higher and n.o.bler civilization.

It is just this ability in the man to wonder, to see something to wonder at, to wors.h.i.+p, to admire, which lifts him one grade higher than that of the average level of his tribe. So that which makes man a man is the capacity in him to admire. All admiration is the essence, the root, of wors.h.i.+p. And, the more things a man admires, the greater and n.o.bler type of man he is seen to be. If he can admire music, if he can admire painting, if he can admire sculpture, if he can admire poetry, if he can admire literature of every kind, if he can admire grand architecture, the beautiful monuments of the world, we say, Here is a large, all-round type of man. We estimate his dignity, his greatness, by the capacity that he shows for wors.h.i.+p in its lower type; for wors.h.i.+p is simply looking up with admiration.

There is another quality about this wors.h.i.+p that I wish to speak of. It is the power that is capable of transforming a man, making him over into the likeness of that which he admires. You find the man without this capacity, and you know it is hopeless to appeal to him, hopeless to set up ideals, hopeless to place before him enticing examples. There is nothing in him to which these things appeal. Take Alexander the Great. It is said he carried around with him a copy of the Iliad, and that Achilles was his ideal of a hero. Do you not see how this admiration transformed the life of the young king, and made him after the type of that which he admired? It does not make any difference what this special admiration may be. Let a man admire Beethoven, and he will cultivate instinctively the qualities that make the beauty and greatness of Beethoven's character and the wonders of his career.

This ideal may be in a book, it may be embodied in fiction. I have liked always, either on the walls of my room or on the walls of my heart, to have certain portraits of persons whom I have loved, who are no longer living; and they are to me constant stimulus. They speak to me by day, and in my dreams at night their eyes follow me, and seem to look into my soul; and in their presence I could not do a mean, an unmanly thing. I love, I reverence, I wors.h.i.+p these lofty ideals. And the quality of these characters filters down through and permeates the thought and the life.

You remember how the other aspect of this thought is ill.u.s.trated by Shakspere. He says, ”My nature is subdued To what it works in, like the dyer's hand.” If that with which you keep company, that you admire, is below you, it degrades; if it is above you, it lifts. In any case you are transformed, shaped into the likeness of that which you admire.

There is another aspect of this close akin to that which I have just been dealing with. It is only the wors.h.i.+pper who has in him any promise, any possibility, of growth. Whether it is the individual or the nation, it makes no difference. If you find no capacity to admire that which is above and beyond you, then there is no hope of progress.

Take the young man who thinks he has exhausted the possibilities of the world, who has reached the stage, who prides himself on not being surprised, not being over whelmed, not admiring anything. The careful outside observer knows that, instead of having exhausted the possibilities and greatness and wonders of the universe, he has simply exhausted himself.

The man who knows how full the world is of that which is beautiful and great and true and n.o.ble walks through the universe with his head bared and bowed, and feels, as did Moses when standing in the presence of the burning bush, that he ought to take off his shoes from his feet, for the place where he is standing is holy ground. Wherever you are standing in this universe, which is full of G.o.d from star to dust particle, is holy ground; and, if you do not feel it, if you are not touched, if you are not bowed, if you are not thrilled with wonder, it is defect in you, and not lack of G.o.d.

If the musician admires his great predecessors and strives to emulate them; if the painter in the presence of the Sistine Madonna feels lifted and touched, so that he never can be content with poor work again; if the sculptor is ready to bend his knees in the presence of the Venus of Melos, as he sees her standing at the end of the long gallery in the Louvre; if the lover of his kind admires John Howard, and can never be content unless he is doing something for his fellow- men again; if we can be touched by lives like Clara Barton's, like Florence Nightingale's, like Dorothea Dix's, like the great and consecrated ones of the earth; if in any department of life we can be lifted, humbled, thrilled, at the same time with the thought of the greatness and glory and beauty that are above and beyond us, then there is hope of growth, then there is life that can come to something fine and n.o.ble in the future.

I wish, in the light of these ill.u.s.trations of what wors.h.i.+p means, to note the thought that a great many men conscientious, earnest, simple who have never been accustomed to think of themselves as religious, and perhaps would deny it if a friend suggested to them that they had in them the possibilities of wors.h.i.+p, that perhaps they are wors.h.i.+ppers, even if they know it not. A great many persons have thrown away the common ideals of wors.h.i.+p, and perhaps have settled down to the idea that they are not wors.h.i.+ppers at all, while all the time the substance and the beauty and the glory of wors.h.i.+p are in their daily lives and always in their hearts. I want to suggest two or three grades of wors.h.i.+p, to show that this wors.h.i.+p climbs; and I want to call attention to the fact that on the lowest grade it is wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d just the same as on the highest, that all wors.h.i.+p or admiration for truth, for beauty, for good, wherever, however, manifested, is really wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d, whether we think of it or call it by that name or not, because they all are manifestations of G.o.d.

Take the man who is touched and lifted by natural beauty, the sense of natural power; the man who loves the woods, who turns and stands to see the glory of a sunset, who is lifted by tides of emotion as he hears the surf beat on the sh.o.r.e, who feels bowed in the presence of the wide night sky of stars, who is humbled at the same time that he is uplifted in the presence of the mountains, who is touched by all natural scenes of beauty and peace and glory. Are not these men in their degree wors.h.i.+ppers?

Take the feeling that is expressed in those beautiful lines of Byron.

We do not think of Byron as a religious nature, but certainly he had in him the heart of wors.h.i.+p when he could write such thoughts as these:

”'Tis midnight.

On the mountains brown The cold, round moon s.h.i.+nes deeply down; Blue roll the waters; blue the sky Seems like an ocean hung on high, Bespangled with those isles of light, So wildly, spiritually bright.

Whoever looked upon them s.h.i.+ning And turned to earth without repining, Nor wished for wings to flee away And mix with their eternal ray?”

And Wordsworth says he feels a Presence that ”Disturbs him with the joy of elevated thought, A sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused.”

And so you may run all through the poets, these simply as hints, specimens, every one of them wors.h.i.+ppers, touched by the beauty, glory, uplift of the natural world.

And then pa.s.s to the next stage, and come to the wors.h.i.+p of the human, to the admiration of the highest and finest qualities that are manifested in the lives of men and women. Who is there that is not touched and thrilled by some story of heroic action, of heroic self- sacrifice, of consecration to duty in the face of danger and death? And no matter what this manifestation of human goodness may be, if you can be thrilled by it and lifted by it, then you have taken another step up this ladder of wors.h.i.+p which leads you into the very presence chamber of the Divine.

Let a boy read the life of Lincoln, see his earnest thirst for knowledge, the sacrifice he was willing to pay for it, his consecration to his ideals of truth, the transparent honesty of the man, the supreme contempt with which he could look down upon anything poor or mean or low, the firmness and simplicity with which he a.s.sumes high office, the faithfulness, the una.s.suming devotion, that he carries into the fulfilment of the trust. Take him all the way through, study his character and admire, and you are a wors.h.i.+pper of that which is divine.

So in the case of Jesus, the supreme soul of history in its consecration to the Father, its simple trust in the divine love, its superiority to fear, to question, to death. When we bow ourselves in the presence of the Nazarene, we are not wors.h.i.+pping another G.o.d. We are wors.h.i.+pping his Father and our Father as lie s.h.i.+nes in the face of Jesus, as he illumines and beautifies his life, as he makes glorious the humble pathways of Galilee, and so casts a reflected glory over the humblest pathways any of us may be called upon to tread.