Jesus, as he illumines and beautifies his life, as he makes glorious
the humble pathways of Galilee, and so casts a reflected glory over the
humblest pathways any of us may be called upon to tread.

The next step in our ascent brings us to the conscious worship of God
himself. We cannot grasp the divine idea. The finite cannot measure or
outline the infinite; and so, when we say God, we mean only the
grandest ideal that we can frame, that reaches on towards, but can
never adequately express the Deity. And so we worship this thought,
this ideal, growing as our capacity develops, advancing as the race
advances, and ever leading us Godward, as when we follow a ray of light
we are travelling towards its source. And the attitude of our souls in
the presence of this which is divine is truest worship. The humility of
it, the exaltation of it, is beautifully phrased in two or three lines
which I wish to repeat to you from Browning's Saul: "I but open my
eyes, and perfection, no more and no less, In the kind I imagined,
full-fronts me, and God is seen God In the star, in the stone, in the
flesh, in the soul and the clod. And, thus looking within and around
me, I ever renew (With that stoop of the soul which in bending upraises
it, too), As by each new obeisance in spirit I climb to his feet!"

Here is the significance of the thought I had in mind at the opening.
We talk about humbling ourselves. When we can bend with reverence in
the presence of that which is above us, the very bending is exaltation;
for it indicates the capacity to appreciate, to admire, to adore. Thus
we climb up into the ability to worship God, the infinite Spirit, our
Father, in spirit and in truth.

Now to raise one moment the question suggested near the opening, Are
forms of worship to pass away? The reply to this seems to me perfectly
clear. Those forms which sprang out of and are fitted to only lower
ideals of worship, ideals which humanity outgrows, these must be left
behind, or else they must be transformed, and filled with a new and
higher meaning. But forms will always remain. But note one thing: they
sometimes say that we Unitarians are too cold, and do not have form
enough. You will see that, the higher men rise intellectually, the less
there is always of outward expression.

For example, before men were able to speak with any large vocabulary,
they eked out their meaning by all kinds of motions and gestures. But
the most highly cultivated men