That is
the reason why the whole world could claim Christ, and how He can be
preached to everybody and accepted by everybody. Behold, He was at home
everywhere!

(b) Inclusive in Worship.--Inclusive in doctrine, the primitive Church
was wisely inclusive in worship too. It would be nonsense to speak of
Christian worship as of something quite new and surprising. There was
very little new and very little surprising in it indeed; almost nothing.
The first Church met for prayer in the Jewish temple. Wherever the
apostles came to preach the new Gospel they went to the old places of
prayer, to the temples of Jehovah. Their Christian spirit did not revolt
against the old forms of worship. Later on the naked Christian spirit
needed to be clothed, and it was clothed. But when Israel looked to
Christian worship they recognised much--forms, signs, vestments and
administration--to be like their own. And not only Israel, but even
Egypt, India, Babylon and Persia, Greece and Rome, yea, the Pagans of
North and South. If Nature could speak, it could say how much it lent of
its own to Christian worship.

A student of ancient history one day asked me: "How can I recognise the
Christian religion as the best of all, when I know how much it borrowed
from the ancient religious forms of worship? How poor it looks without
all that!"

I said: "Just this wonderful power of embracing and assimilating gives
evidence of the vitality and universality of Christianity. It is too
large in spirit to be clothed by one nation or one race only. It is too
rich in spirit and destination to be expressed by one tongue, by one
sign, or one symbol, or one form. In the same sense as Christian
doctrine was prepared and prophesied by the religions and the
philosophies before Christ, in the same sense Christian worship was
prepared and prophesied as well. Whenever the Christian spirit is strong
the Church is not afraid of worship being strange, and ample, and even
grotesque. The weaker the Christian spirit, the greater exclusiveness in
worship. Some people say: It is wicked to use pagan architecture for the
Church, and incense and fire, and music, or dance, or bowing, or
kneeling, or signs and symbols, in Christian worship, because it is
pagan." Yes, all this is pagan indeed, but it is Christian too if we
wish it to be. The Latin language was pagan, but now it is Christian
too. The English language was a vehicle of Paganism as well, now it is a
vehicle of Christi