n any reasonable interpreter of his words and deeds imagine that
he intended his admonition in the sixth chapter of Matthew to be taken
as a prohibition of public worship or of social prayer. Those words were
simply a reproof of ostentation in worship. The Pharisees, whose conduct
he is castigating, "loved to pray standing in the synagogues and in the
corners of the streets, that they might be seen of men." It was a
private and personal prayer, offered in a public place, to advertise the
devotion of the worshiper. With our private and personal prayers the
public has no concern; it is a manifest indelicacy to thrust them before
the public; the place for them is the secret chamber. Individual sins
and sorrows and needs we all have, and when we talk with our Father
about them we ought to be alone with him; but we have also common sins
and sorrows and needs, and it is well for us to be together when we talk
with him about them. It is therefore a gross perversion of these words
of Jesus to quote them in condemnation of acts of public worship. His
entire life and the example of all those who were nearest to him, as
well as the testimony of the best Christians in all the ages, unite to
render such a notion incredible.

If I have succeeded in answering the cavils which seek to discredit the
church as a social organization, and especially as an agency for the
maintenance of social worship, let me go on to suggest some positive
reasons for the existence of such an agency.

Such an opportunity as the church offers for social worship is essential
to the maintenance of religion. Religious feeling the expression of
which was confined to the relations between the individual and his God,
would become self-centred, egoistic, and morbid. If there were no
praying but secret praying, if the social element were eliminated from
prayer and praise, faith would take on ascetic forms, devotion would
become rancid, sympathy would be smothered, and the character of the
worshiper would be hardened and belittled. There is a place and a time,
as we have seen, for private devotion; probably many of us make far less
use of it than would be good for us; but any attempt to shut our
religion into the closet would be suicidal. It would mould there. To
keep it fresh and wholesome it must be taken out into the light and air;
the winds of heaven must blow through it; our desires must mingle with
the desires of others; our voices must join with their voices; w