believed everywhere in the Presence of a Heavenly Father Whom his bodily eye could not see, nor his bodily ear hear, but Who, he knew, was always with him. But, my brethren, observe, it was this great lover of Nature—this man who could see in all common sights witnesses to the presence of God, who yet felt such a longing for the public services of the Temple.
Private prayer, however devout and fervent, was not enough for him. The great Temple of the Universe, full, to his noble soul, of witnesses for God, was yet no sufficient substitute to him for "the courts of the Lords House." "One day in Thy courts" he says, "is better than a thousand" elsewhere; to be "a doorkeeper" there, was better than "to dwell in the tents of ungodliness:"[1] even the "swallow" and the "sparrow" that had found a nest in the altars of the Lord's House, were objects of envy to David.
Consider how this could be.
I spoke to you last Sunday morning of the evidence in Scripture, and in the history of the Church in the earliest ages, to the fact that the Apostles and first Christians valued and found pleasure in public worship; of how the inspired writers solemnly warned the Hebrew Christians against forsaking it, even when it was dangerous and could only be attended at the risk of their lives; and how evident it is that the Apostles and first disciples found peculiar and deep pleasure in attending the frequent services of the Temple; and how our Lord Himself seems to have taught them this by His own example, inasmuch as He attended daily in the Temple.
But men may not all see why good and holy men feel such pleasure in public worship, or find it even such a necessity for their souls. If they are men of reverent and teachable minds, willing to sit at the feet of the Apostles, they will allow at once that daily public worship must be good, since the Apostles practised it, and, above all, since our Lord Jesus Christ Himself did so; but they may
- ↑ Psalm lxxxiv. 10, 11.
