n always
more rational ideas, sounder notions. They felt that it was God who had
made them into families, and therefore whole families met together to
worship in common Him of whom every family in heaven and earth is named.
That God had formed them into societies whether into tribes, as of old,
or into parishes, as here now; and therefore whole parishes came together
to worship God, whose laws they were bound to obey in their parochial
society. They felt that it was God who had made them into Nations (as
the psalm says which we repeat every Sunday morning), and not they
themselves; and therefore they conceived the grand idea of National
churches, in which the whole nation should, if possible, worship Sunday
after Sunday, at the same time, and in the same words, that God to whom
they owed their order, their freedom, their strength, their safety, their
National unity and life. And not in silence merely. These blessed souls
in heaven are not silent. They in heaven follow out the human instinct
which they had on earth, which all men (when they recollect themselves,
will have), when they feel a thing deeply, when they believe a thing
strongly, to speak it--to speak it aloud. They do not fancy in heaven,
as the priests of Baal did on earth, that they must cry aloud, or God
could not hear them. They do not fancy, as the heathen do, that they
must make vain repetitions, and say the same words over and over again by
rote, because they will be heard for their much speaking; neither need
you and I. But yet they spoke aloud, because out of the fulness of the
heart the mouth speaketh; and so should you and I.

And this brings me to the special object of my sermon. I have told you
what (as it seems to me) Worship means; why we worship; why we worship
together; and why we ought to worship aloud. Believe me, this last is
your duty just as much as mine. The services of the Church of England
are so constructed that the whole congregation may take part in them,
that they may answer aloud in the responses, that they may say Amen at
the end of each prayer, just as they read or chant aloud the alternate
verses of the Psalms. The minister does not say prayers for them, but
with them. He is only their leader, their guide. And if they are not to
join in with their voices, there is really no reason why he should use
his voice, why he should not say the prayers in silence and to himself,
if the cong