rest form belongs. For since
preaching makes its appeal chiefly through reason, it thereby attempts
to produce only a partial and relative experience in the life of the
listener. It impinges upon the will by a slow process. Sometimes one
gets so deadly weary of preaching because, in a world like ours, the
reasonable process is so unreasonable. That's a half truth, of course,
but one that the modern world needs to learn.

Others would dissent from our position by saying that service, the
life of good will, is a sufficient worship. The highest adoration is
to visit the widows and the fatherless in their affliction. _Laborare
est orare_. What we do speaks so loud God does not care for what
we say. True: but the value of what we do for God depends upon the
godliness of the doer and where shall he find that godliness save in
the secret place of the Most High? And the greatest gift we can give
our fellows is to bring them into the divine presence. "There is,"
says Dr. William Adams Brown, "a service that is directed to the
satisfaction of needs already in existence, and there is a service
that is itself the creator of new needs which enlarge the capacity of
the man to whom it would minister. To this larger service religion
is committed, and the measure of a man's fitness to render it is his
capacity for worship." But no one can give more than he has. If we are
to offer such gifts we must ourselves go before and lead. To create
the atmosphere in which the things of righteousness and holiness
seem to be naturally exalted above the physical, the commercial, the
domestic affairs of men; to lift the level of thought and feeling
to that high place where the spiritual consciousness contributes its
insights and finds a magnanimous utterance--is there anything that our
world needs more? There are noble and necessary ministries to the body
and the mind, but most needed, and least often offered, there is a
ministry to the human spirit. This is the gift which the worshiper can
bring. Knowledge of God may not be merely or even chiefly comprehended
in a concept of the intelligence; knowledge of Him is that vitalizing
consciousness of the Presence felt in the heart, which opens our eyes
that we may see that the mountain is full of horses and chariots of
fire round about us and that they who fight with us are more than
they who fight with them. This is the true and central knowledge that
private devotion and public worship alone can give; pr