tV

)roiA/n

Mwv2if

SPIRITUAL WORSHIP,

A SERMON

BY

REV. HOWARD N. BROWN,

oj? brookline:

1 BOSTON:
ALFRED MUDGE $ SON, PRINTERS,
!r No;. 24 >FR,ankj.ih Street.
' . ¦. '" . *8QO.

SPIRITUAL WORSHIP,

A SERMON

BY

REV. HOWARD N. BROWN,

OF BROOKLINE.

BOSTON:
ALFRED MUDGE & SON, PRINTERS,
No. 24 Franklin Street.
1890.

SERMON

The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall
worship the Father in spirit and in truth. — John iv. 23.
It was to be expected, and, indeed, to be desired,
that the passion for analysis, which has so strongly
characterized the modern mind, would sooner or later
seize upon religion as its lawful spoil. We have
learned much, and doubtless have much more to
learn, of the highest practical value from those in
vestigations which have laid bare many of the ele
ments of our complex existence. But as every good:
thing appears to be subject to some abuse, so a con
siderable portion of the analytic studies conducted
in recent years not only fails to reach a result im
mediately useful, but is made the basis of theories
and influences positively injurious in their effect.
Religion has fared no worse under these studies than
other provinces of life, that of morals, for example,
where two false assumptions have sprung up to pro
duce no inconsiderable amount of mischief. Indeed,
concerning many of the subjects now under consid
eration, you will find these assumptions continually
cropping out in the current literature of the day.

First, that when we have found the root of any liv
ing thing, or resolved a complex form into its con
stituent elements, we have fully explained it, — gotten
rid of all the mystery it has hitherto contained ; and,
secondly, that being able to trace the origins of human
thought and feeling down into levels of existence
far beneath us, everything that may properly be
called " divine " is banished from our lives, which are,
in essence, nothing but the lives of beasts and sav
ages carried upward to a higher stage of develop
ment. Our science is, in fact, as far from being able
to explain the fundamental mystery of the universe
as ever it has been. Our analysis of both the organic
and the inorganic worlds has only sufficed to explore
some of the channels which all lead back at last to
the same inexplicable secret. What electricity is, for
instance, we know no more than did the investigators
of the preceding century. Nay, we are more certain
of our ignorance ; for, while they boldly spoke of two
fluids which they called positive and negative, we
have to confess that we cannot, even in imagina
tion, construct a theory which answers as a satisfac
tory explanation. You may divide a plant into some
millions of individual growing cells, but the growth
of one of these cells is as great a mystery as the
growth of the plant; and when men assume that by
finding the cell they have explained the life of the
plant, they assume much more than they have warrant
for. Growing out of this false assumption, which is

quite commonly made, though of course not by those
who are real authorities in science, there is the other
false inference, that life in all its higher develop
ments is no more than a repetition of its lowest
beginnings. Shutting their eyes to that unknown
factor of existence, which must be added to all
the elements we can find, men do not recognize in
the higher forms of life anything more than a
product of the elements which they have defined
and labelled. What practical mischief results from
this I will not now stop to point out; enough that
it is a false assumption. When you have carried
your analysis as far as you can, there is always
something left over which you cannot grasp. That
something is a prime factor of every product of
these elements ; so that the growth of our civilization
is more than a development of savage traits and
customs. It is that growth plus the energy of
that mysterious power which no man by searching
has yet found out, and from which, as we need not
go far about to discover, precisely the most valuable
part of our life has come.
Now, as respects religion, our biologists trace
that backward, step by step, through its successive
historic manifestations, till they come, as the root
and origin of the whole series of phenomena, to
what? To ghost-worship as it is practised to-day
by certain savage tribes. And this ghost-worship is
what ? It is the attempt, chiefly by means of sac-

6
rifice and adulation, to placate the spirits of the
dead; which spirits, the living fear, may otherwise
do them an injury. " Behold," it is said, " the ex
planation of religion ! " Furthermore, it is declared
that this is the essence of religion through all its
higher manifestations and phases. The spirits or
ghosts may grow to be gods ; the gods may give
place to one universal spirit; but, always, religion
springs from fear of a spiritual being or beings,
and is the method adopted to influence his or their
action, so that it shall be kindly, not hurtful or
revengeful. It is not denied that there are small
bodies of people here and there who try to make
of religion something quite different. But they, it
is said, have removed themselves from the religious
ground entirely. The strength of that mighty move
ment which has produced the religions of the world
is not in them, and they will soon give up pretend
ing to be, in any sense, the outcome of historic re
ligions, or, as seems most probable to many, their
enterprises will merely wither away, like paper fruit
hung artificially upon the branches of a tree. . . .
Now, mark how small a point will puncture this big
speculative bubble, for that is all it truly is. It is
not to be denied that ghost-worship is one root of
religion, so far as that has a visible historic source.
It is also plain that what is the essence of ghost-
worship in its lowest forms has been one prominent
feature of the religion of the common people in all

ages ; that is to say, the attempt to avert the wrath
Or the unfriendliness of unseen powers chiefly by
means of sacrifices of various kinds. But that this
is the sum and substance of religion, I utterly deny.
Might it not occur to our learned friends, who find
in the superstitions of wild African tribes a germ
of all the higher types of religious development, that
the one element of most interest to us is wholly
lacking in the life of these savages, viz , the element
of growth or progression ? So far as we know,
these wild tribes existing at the present day do not
manifest in themselves the slightest form of moral
or spiritual advance. Though they can be reached
and elevated by the missionaries of other religions,
they have no capacity for elevating themselves. But
the root of our religion must have had in it the
power of growth. We may grant that our remote
spiritual ancestors practised religious customs very
like those of the lowest types of humanity now ex
isting; but their religion, whatever it was, must
have possessed one quality which the fetichism of
the savage conspicuously lacks, and that is, the up
ward tendency from a lower to a higher phase of
religious custom and belief. When the theory of
development first began to be talked about, it was
assumed that the ape was man's physical progenitor.
Further investigation has led to the abandonment of
that assumption. It is now presumed that the ape
is the result of an offshoot of the great tree of

8
development, which rose thus far, but failed to rise
any higher; while some other line of descent, not
now to be accurately traced, rose higher, and finally
gave birth to man. So it appears plain to me, the
theory that our religion comes through and out of
the superstitions of the African or the Australian
savage will have to be abandoned. In these latter
there is no visible tendency, no discoverable princi
ple that might produce a tendency toward higher
and better things. Left to themselves, they remain
stationary, or sink to more degraded levels. This is
true, I believe, of all the religions of savage tribes
that we know anything about. Yet the religion out
of which our faith and practice have come has un
deniably grown. However like to what we now see
in the lowest forms of human life it may have been
in its earliest stages, that religion had something
which these have not, — had the power to rise out of
its first crude customs and ideas into better methods
and more truthful conceptions of spiritual life. It
may be said, perhaps, that religion in that early time
did not grow upward, but was dragged upward by
the general advance of knowledge ; that the principle
of growth was planted elsewhere in the mind, and
that religious beliefs and customs simply changed
with the expanding intellect. But, inasmuch as reli
gion was the main business of man in ancient times,
and held the foremost place in all his thoughts, cer
tainly that seems the proper field in which to search

9
for the principle of mental and moral development,
which brought him forward at least to the threshold
of civilization.
Meanwhile, such a principle may be easily and
reasonably supplied ; one which was competent to
lead the whole life of the primeval world onward
in the path of mental development; one which ex
plains how religion came to be, not a stationary but
a growing thing; and this, I ask you to observe, is
the consideration which puts a new meaning into all
religion, past, present, and that which is to come.
I assert that in all religion which has been truly
alive and growing there must have been, from the
beginning, an element of spiritual worship; the rec
ognition by the heart of some form of worth to
which it had not attained ; a reverence for that worth
as something higher and holier than the worshipper
himself, and a desire to be like that which was the
pattern of his thoughts and aims. There has been
not only the religion of fear, but, side by side with
that, or rather, perhaps, within that, as the small
heart and centre of the whole mass of religious cus
toms, there has been a religion of love and reverence
for something that has appeared to the heart of
man better and more divine than itself. What a
purely superficial observation it is which, looking
back to the Middle Ages, can see nothing but the
most ignorant sort praying in terror to the saints,
which does not see also a better class enshrining in

10
their hearts the virtues of these dead heroes and
heroines, and fails to consider that the saint was ele
vated into a god whose relics become the charms
for superstition to wear, only because his life had
been so noble, brave, and pure as to awaken the
reverence of the common heart !
The worship of Greek and Roman and Egyptian
gods was, to large extent, a worship of heroes, and
grew in part out of traditional love and respect for
those mighty ones whose shining deeds had sunk
deep into the memory of the race. The more primi
tive Greek unquestionably worshipped the shades of
his own immediate ancestors. But what compels us
to assume that this was a worship of pure supersti
tious terror? Did he not love and honor these
fathers while they were still in the flesh ? What
more natural than that, by means of his religion, he
continued to testify his affection for them through
the rites he performed upon their graves ? Go farther
back, to that cradle of all the Indo-European races,
the fertile plains of Central Asia, where our remote
Aryan ancestors had their homes, and it is certain
that the nature-worship of those times was an expres
sion, not of terror alone, but of wonder and grati
tude. The ancient hymns and prayers preserved in
the sacred writings of the Hindoos prove that this
element of spiritual worship was a living force within
that prehistoric religion. If it be said that these
ancient writings leave us still far short of the original

11
root of religious custom and belief, and are no proof
o; the capacity of the first rude man to feel respect
or reverence, then, I say, go lower still in the scale
•of being, and you will find clear evidences that this
•capacity exists in forms of life beneath that of the
first primitive human existence. Who believes that
the horse and the dog serve us only in fear ? Who
•does not know that these dumb animals look up to
us in glad acknowledgment of our superiority, and
that when they know what we require of them it is
their pride and delight to obey our will, do our work,
and receive our commendation? Did the process of
development turn backward in the step from horse
and dog to man ? and when animal life began to go
erect on two feet, and to utter articulate sounds, had
it a lower mental endowment than that of four-footed
beasts ? What is the reason for that insane per
versity which insists that none but the darkest ele
ments of life are original and powerful, and that
everything noble and good has no source or suste
nance from the deeps of existence ? If a man wants
to think ill of his kind, and of the institutions which
humanity has developed, he will no doubt find pre
texts for so doing. But the unprejudiced mind,
looking into the past, will see that love is as old as
hate ; that reverence for what it saw to be good
awoke in the mind as soon as fear of what it saw
to be evil, and that in all the great religions of the
world it is as easy to find the element of spiritual

12
worship as that of superstitious fear. I say again,.
that the unprogressive religion of the savage to-day
is no mirror in which to read the secret of that
religion which has developed great faiths and lofty
sentiments. As well might one dissect a painted
post to find out what makes the tree grow. You.
will find everywhere, that in so far as men have
practised religious forms merely to keep off that of
which they were afraid, that has been a debasing and
degrading habit, which has dragged the whole life
down. You will see also that wherever men have
bowed reverently before an ideal excellence, or before
such living embodiments of superior truth and good
ness as they have seen, that has been a most profit
able exercise of the mind, and has pushed the whole
life up to higher levels.
When therefore the dilettante sceptic of the present
day tells me that they who would now devote religion
to the highest spiritual uses are but invoking forces
which will never turn in their direction, planting a
seed which the soil of human nature will never
quicken or develop, I am not in the least dismayed--
I know that, owing to the obliquity of his vision, he
sees but half the truth. His vaunted " explanation '"
fails utterly to explain. His assumption that hate
and fear are the only sources of ppwer in human
life are wholly groundless. I claim for the religion
of love and spiritual worship as great antiquity as
belongs to that of superstitious fear. I am sure that

13
in all ages the spirit of devotion to a higher form of
good has been the seed of life, for which unholy
charms and incantations have been no more than a
prickly, perishable burr ; and I know that to-day
the highest, purest forms of religion have in them the
elements of life and growth and power to carry them
forward, or to raise up worthy successors, when all
the superstitions that have fastened upon the lower
forms of faith are sloughed off and forgotten.
But what of worship in present and future times ?
Suppose it has been of great importance in the past :
of what importance is it to us ? Since that is a large
question, demanding much time for its full treatment,.
let us here assume that whatever may be for the ad
vantage of exceptional minds, some social or common
expression of what is best in our thought and desire,.
is of great benefit to most of us. True worship is of
the heart ; and there may be some who, alone and
unassisted, can keep the sacred flame burning upon
the heart's altars. But ordinary human nature, if it is
to worship at all, will need the help of some common
endeavor; and if men are to worship together, they
must have outward forms and customs, in the observ
ance of which they can unite. Let this be granted,
and there are two further points to which I desire to-
call your attention.
They who see religion only on its darker side
insist, properly enough from their point of view, that
it has nothing to do with morals or conduct. It has-

14
been dinned in our ears with much iteration of late
years that religion and morality spring from different
sources. On both sides this divorce is proclaimed.
The priest is eager to declare that his authority is in
nowise derived from the moral sentiments, and the
moralist is sure that the cause which he represents is
quite independent of the religion of the priest. But
once take the position that religion is, at the deepest,
most abiding heart of it, a worship of the good, and
however separable it may be from morality in theory,
in fact the two are absolutely one and indivisible.
Let the life of Christ be our example, and you will see
that the long controversy concerning the value of
faith and works, which has so vexed the life of the
church, did not and could not enter into his thought,
or give him the least uneasiness. He knew no
religion which was not fundamentally adoration of
the infinite righteousness. He knew no morality
save that which derives all its motive and strength
from the heart's reverence for an ideal right and jus
tice. Of all idle distinctions, that between religion
and morals is about the least significant, whenever
religion is seen to be worship of the good. If super
stition be immoral, it is no less irreligious ; as false to
the true purpose for which religion exists among men,
as it is blind to, or careless of, the behests of moral
sentiment. Why do you think religion has been per
mitted to exist upon the earth, if it has not somehow
helped forward man's enlightenment and develop-

15
ment ? That by virtue of which it has come into
existence and maintained its place must be a good and
not an evil quality. The Decalogue, given by Moses,
was both a religious and a moral law. All true
religion has been, and remains, absolutely wedded to
righteousness as the great end of both its worship and
endeavor. Underneath the cover of all rituals and
creeds, hearts will be found truly devoted to this high
est aim. It is only a question of the greater or less
density of the enveloping medium of historic custom
and belief, through which this light of spritual worship
strives evermore to shine. Why, then, should men
worship to-day ? Because religion is a bulwark of law,
of order, and of decency ; because taking upon one's
lips the language of adoration and aspiration for the
holy life tends to awaken the emotions in the heart
out of which that language springs ; because all rever
ent, thoughtful worship is in its final outcome one of
the strongest and severest schools of conduct ever es
tablished upon the earth. How can men be so blind
to this certainty ? Because here and there a hypocrite,
who at heart believes nothing and reverences nothing,
cloaks himself in a religious habit ; because, on the
moral sentiment which the centuries have accumu
lated, men and women can now live wholly outside
churches, how can they think so lightly of that mark
which the yearning piety of the past has set upon
their souls, or fling away so easily the means that have
still a great task of purification and enlightenment to
perform ?

16
Wofully, miserably narrow is that critical spirit,
now so active, which sees only minute spots and
blemishes upon the Church as it stands, and misses
those broad lines of a providential mission which
organized religion is set to fulfil. I do not for one
instant tremble for the future of religion. Worship
is as certain to survive a present period of compara
tive negligence as music or literature. But alas for
those who deprive themselv.es of what this discipline
of the heart makes possible to men, and alas for the
harvest that waits because the laborers are few !
Finally, I have to say that there is something even
higher than conduct with which the future of religion
is indissolubly bound up, something which our word
" character " serves to indicate as nearly as any other.
What a man is in himself, is of more consequence
than what he does; decides in the main, far more than
outward circumstances, what his action shall be, and
determines whether his life on earth shall find some
deep source of satisfaction, or shall be filled with dis
content. No man can be a full man, or possess
anything like a complete and well-rounded character,
while his religious nature lies dormant and unawa-
kened. I have heard men sneer at Washington
because of his piety, imply that this great hero of
our early national life, whose sublime virtues, in time
to come, will shed more glory upon the land he loved
than the whole of our advancing material splendor,
was a time-server in his appeals to the religious feel-

17
ing and belief of his countrymen. Thus do men
fling stones at those who bear upon their shoulders
the weight of vast human interests, and insult their
memory when their heroic work is done. That there
is a small-souled kind of piety, which pays its tithes
of mint and cummin, and neglects all weightier
matters of the law, is unfortunately too true. But
not to see that in the stress of life's battle, where it
seems as if the heart must break under the tre-
•
mendous issues and responsibilities that weigh it
down, he only is fit to stand, or can stand, for more
than some brief moment, whose soul rests implicitly
on faith in God, and turns, unwearied by delay, to
seek strength and continuance from that infinite
source ! The great soul is of necessity a religious
soul, and, in all its several stations and degrees,
human nature is still lame, and halt, and blind, want
ing those feelings, perceptions, and beliefs which
express themselves through worship. I do not say
that these emotions and ideas cannot exist apart
from formal religious observances, but I do say that
true spiritual worship is as a great school whereby
this deeper nature is educated and strengthened in
the common heart ; a school whereby belief in good
ness, trust in God, and confidence in the coming of
his kingdom, are helped forward as habitual traits of
the daily life of all mankind.
The hour now is when true worshippers worship
the Father in spirit and in truth. By many different

18
forms this incense of the heart daily ascends to
heaven, and from those altars of the spirit where it
burns our human life takes on a warmer, holier glow.
Let us also seek gladly and eagerly to bow our
hearts in adoring reverence before the almighty
power and wisdom, greater far than our weak intel
lects and wills, knowing that thus our minds may
put on, day by day, more of that divine perfection
in whose image the children of God have been
created.