cares not for
it and is unmindful of any pain or affliction. She has a strange
sweetness in her mind, and singular purity in her affections, is most
just and conscientious in all her conduct, and you could not persuade
her to do anything wrong or sinful if you would give her all the
world, lest she should offend this great Being. She is of wonderful
calmness and universal benevolence of mind, especially after this
great God has manifested Himself to her mind. She will sometimes go
about from place to place singing sweetly and seems to be always full
of joy and pleasure, and no one knows for what. She loves to be alone,
walking in the fields and groves, and seems to have some one invisible
always conversing with her."

Almost every element of worship is contained in this description.
First, we have a young human being emotionally conscious of the
presence of God, who in some way or other directly but invisibly comes
to her. Secondly, we have her attention so fixed on the adoration of
God that she hardly cares for anything except to meditate upon Him.
Thirdly, as the result of this worshipful approach to religious
reality, we have the profound peace and harmony, the _summum bonum_
of existence, coupled with strong moral purpose which characterize
her life. Here, then, is evidently the unification of consciousness in
happy awe and the control of destiny through meditation upon infinite
matters, that is, through reverent contemplation of God. Is it not
one of those ironies of history wherewith fate is forever mocking
and teasing the human spirit, that the grandson of this lady and of
Jonathan Edwards should have been Aaron Burr?

Clearly, then, the end of worship is to present to the mind, through
the imagination, one idea, majestic and inclusive. So it presents it
chiefly through high and sustained feeling. Worship proceeds on the
understanding that one idea, remaining almost unchanged and holding
the attention for a considerable length of time, so directs the
emotional processes that thought and action are harmonized with it.
If one reads the great prayers of the centuries they indicate, for the
most part, an unconscious understanding of this psychology of worship.
Take, for instance, this noble prayer of Pusey's.

"Let me not seek out of Thee what I can find only in Thee, O Lord,
peace and rest and joy and bliss, which abide only in thine abiding
joy. Lift up my soul above the weary round of harassing thoughts, to
T