But can worship be offered to the members of a holy community? In a certain sense one might say, Yes, preëminently so, since worship may be taken to mean Worthship, and the worth intrinsic in our fellowmen is the object of our unceasing homage. At the same time very different associations have gathered about the word. Public worship consists largely of eulogistic singing, prayer, adoration, genuflexion, and these are appropriate only to deity conceived as an individual. We cannot even say with the Psalmist “the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork.” For though the beauty and order apparent in Nature is one aspect of nature on which we delight to dwell, yet we cannot disingenuously suppress the counter evidence of disorder, ugliness and suffering which Nature no less obtrudes on our sight. The argument from design implied in the Psalmist’s words is no longer tenable. Certainly we cannot any longer pray for material assistance as our forefathers did, or invoke supernatural intervention in situations where human science and human helpfulness are impotent. But worship also aims at ethical edification, by holding up to the mind the moral ideal as an object of imitation, and as a rebuke to man’s shortcomings. This indeed is its highest function. Nevertheless the moral ideal, as we conceive it, is incapable of being presented in the guise of an individual being, no matter by what superlative language the limitation inseparable from individuality be concealed. The bare attributes of omniscience and omnipotence are abstract and convey no positive meaning whatever. In actual worship a concrete image is invariably associated with the notion of the individualized Deity, such as the Father image or the Christ image. And as soon as this is done, the vast ethical ideal tends to shrink to the dimensions of a human image; and instead of the ideal in its fullness, only certain selected but inadequate aspects of ethical excellence are presented to the worshiper. And yet in an ethico-religious society also the public manifestation of religion is indispensable. Of what elements shall it consist?