rilled with wonder, it
is defect in you, and not lack of God.

If the musician admires his great predecessors and strives to emulate
them; if the painter in the presence of the Sistine Madonna feels
lifted and touched, so that he never can be content with poor work
again; if the sculptor is ready to bend his knees in the presence of
the Venus of Melos, as he sees her standing at the end of the long
gallery in the Louvre; if the lover of his kind admires John Howard,
and can never be content unless he is doing something for his fellow-
men again; if we can be touched by lives like Clara Barton's, like
Florence Nightingale's, like Dorothea Dix's, like the great and
consecrated ones of the earth; if in any department of life we can be
lifted, humbled, thrilled, at the same time with the thought of the
greatness and glory and beauty that are above and beyond us, then there
is hope of growth, then there is life that can come to something fine
and noble in the future.

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