grace towards mankind, manifested in His Son,
Jesus Christ. To Israel God said, "Ye are my witnesses," and to His
disciples forming the nucleus of the New Testament Church, the risen
Saviour said, "Ye shall be witnesses unto Me."

Side by side with this evident end of the Church's existence is the
other one of Worship. Not only from the individual heart does God
require ascriptions of praise and expressions of confidence, but from
the organized congregation of His people, He desires to hear the voice
of adoration, contrition, and supplication. The cultivation of such
worship, and the offering of it in a manner acceptable to God, is a
work worthy of the Church's most earnest care.

It is to be expected, therefore, that in the Word of God there shall be
found the principles of a cultus which, possessing Divine authority,
shall carry with it the assurance of its sufficiency for the ends aimed
at, and of its suitability to the requirements of the Church in every
age. That the word of God contains such principles clearly indicated,
the Presbyterian Church has always maintained, teaching uniformly and
emphatically that Holy Scripture contains all that is necessary for the
guidance of the Church, as well in matters of Polity and Worship, as in
those of Doctrine. Divine worship, therefore, neither in its constant
elements nor in its methods, is a matter of mere human device, nor is
the Church at liberty to devise or to adopt aught that is not
explicitly stated or implicitly contained in the Word of God for her
guidance.

The essential parts of worship we are at no loss to discover, clearly
indicated as they are in the history of the Apostolic Church. Praise
and Prayer, with the reading and exposition of Scripture, together with
the celebration of the Sacraments, are repeatedly referred to as those
exercises in which the early Christians engaged. With such worship,
though in more elaborate form, the Church had always been familiar, for
as Christianity itself was in so many respects the fruit and outcome of
Judaism, the expansion, into principles of world-wide and perpetual
application, of truths that had hitherto been national and local, so
its worship and organization were, in large measure, the adaptation of
familiar forms to those simpler and more comprehensive ones of the New
Testament Church. Throughout the successive periods of Israel's
history, marked by patriarch, psalmist, and prophet, Divine worship had
grow