and then, unexpectedly, we find ourselves challenged, we
find our taste criticised, and in our efforts at self-defence we blunder
and stumble and hesitate about what we still feel that we are quite
right in holding fast.

It is common things that we thus take for granted; it is daily
activities that we thus assume need no explanation. For us who
habitually gather to the services of the Church there is no more
taken-for-granted act than worship. Worship is a part of our daily
experience. At certain times each day we offer to God stated and formal
acts of worship. Many times a day most likely we pause and for a moment
lift our thought to our blessed Lord for a brief communion with Him. It
is a part of our settled experience thus to draw strength from the
inexhaustible source which at all times is at our disposal. We know how
the tasks of the day are lightened and our strength to meet them renewed
by these momentary invasions of the supernatural. There are also special
times in each week when we meet with other members of the One Body of
Christ in the offering of the unbloody Sacrifice. We know that in that
act heaven and earth join, and that not only our brethren who are
kneeling beside us are uniting with us in the offering of the Sacrifice,
not only are we one with all those other members of the Body who on this
same morning are kneeling at the numberless altars of Christendom, but
that all those who are in Christ are with us partakers of the same
Sacrifice, and that in its offering we are joined with all the holy
dead, and by our partaking of Christ are brought close to one another.
We therefore lovingly take their names upon our lips, and enkindle their
memory in our hearts; and find that death, which we had thought of as a
separation, has but broken the barriers to the deepest and most blessed
communion, and that we are now, as never before, united to those whom we
find in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And then comes the unexpected challenge: "what does all this mean: these
repeated and diverse acts that you are accustomed to speak of and to
think of as acts of worship? What, ultimately, do you mean by worship,
and can there possibly be found any common feature in these so diverse
acts which can justify you in regarding them as essentially one? This
act which is in truth presenting yourself before the majesty of God in
humble adoration, in the guise of a suppliant child depending upon the
love of the Father for the suppl