e of being in his presence, from a feeling of
fellowship with the Divine.

The truest and finest, the sweetest prayer must come oft of the loving,
the sympathetic, the tender soul. No selfish prayer can expect to enter
into the heart of God. You will note in the words that Jesus teaches
his disciples, it is not "My" Father, it is "Our" Father. And, if we
wish to pray in the divine spirit, we shall broaden that "Our" until it
includes not only our family, our church, our city, our State, our
nation, our humanity, but until it includes all life that swims or
walks or flies, feeling that it is the one life of the Father that is
in us all. For, as Coleridge has finely put it, He prayeth best who
loveth best All things, both great and small; For the dear God who
loveth us, He made and loveth all.

THE WORSHIP OF GOD

THERE are those who in religious matters, as well as in all other
departments of life, are content to walk unquestioningly the path which
the footsteps of previous generations have made easy and familiar. But
there are others and these among the more thoughtful and earnest minds
to whom it is not enough to utter earnest words concerning enthusiasm
and devotion, consecration and worship. These spiritual attitudes and
exercises must first be made to appear reasonable to them, fitting,
fitting to their conception of God, fitting to their ideas of that
which is highest and finest in man.

So there are many things that pass to-day as forms of worship, many
ideas connected with worship, which this class of minds cannot heartily
and fully accept. Some of them do not seem to them fitting, as they
look upward towards God. They cannot, for example, believe that God
cares for flattery, cares to sit on his throne, and be told by his
creatures how great and how wonderful he is. They cannot think that he
cares to have presents brought to him, gifts offered on his altar, as
men say. They cannot believe that he really is anxious for many of
these external forms and ceremonies, which seem to the onlooker to
constitute the essential element of much that passes as popular
worship.

And then, on the other hand, man has grown into a sense of dignity. He
has a higher and loftier idea of his own nature and of what is fitting
to a man; and he cannot any longer heartily enter into the meaning of
words which speak of him as a worm of the dust, which seem to him to
intimate that God cares to have him prostrate himself in utter
humi