Our Unitarian GospelSavage, Minot J. (Minot Judson)
Religion
Our Unitarian Gospel
Savage, Minot J. (Minot Judson)
Sermons; Unitarianism
I wish, in the light of these illustrations of what worship 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 worship, that perhaps they are worshippers,
even if they know it not. A great many persons have thrown away the
common ideals of worship, and perhaps have settled down to the idea
that they are not worshippers at all, while all the time the substance
and the beauty and the glory of worship are in their daily lives and
always in their hearts. I want to suggest two or three grades of
worship, to show that this worship climbs; and I want to call attention
to the fact that on the lowest grade it is worship of God just the same
as on the highest, that all worship or admiration for truth, for
beauty, for good, wherever, however, manifested, is really worship of
God, whether we think of it or call it by that name or not, because
they all are manifestations of God.
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 shore, 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
worshippers?
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 worship when he could write such thoughts as these:
"'Tis midnight.
On the mountains brown
The cold, round moon shines 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 shining
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 worshippers, touched by the beauty, glory,
uplift of the natural world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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