Article April 28, 1917 Issue

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with contributions from Rufus M. Jones, Joseph Fort Newton, William A. Elliott, Robert E. Speer, George R. Dodson

[Rufus M. Jones, D.Litt., in The Homiletic Review]

By worship I mean the act of rising to a personal, experimental consciousness of the real presence of God, which floods the soul with joy and bathes the whole inward spirit with refreshing streams of life. Never to have felt that, never to have experienced the life to these incoming divine tides, never to have experienced the joy of personal fellowship with God, is surely to have missed the richest privilege and the highest beatitude of religion. Almost all of our modern forms of Christianity make too little of this central act, and with some truth it has been called "the lost art of worship."

The main reason for the decline of worship is the excessive desire, so common today, to have something always happening, or, as we often say, to have something "doing." Hush, waiting, meditation, concentration of spirit, are just the reverse of our busy, driving, modern temper. The person who meditates, we are apt to think, will lose an opportunity to do something; while he muses, the procession will go on and leave him behind.

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