March 3

I will go unto the altar of God, unto God my exceeding joy. - Psalms 43:4.

THIS regards the worship of God; and our worship is infinitely due to him, whether we consider the eminency of his perfections or his relation to us. Some are above all the formalities of religion; they find every day a Sabbath, and every place a temple, and in so saying give too much reason to question whether they worship God at all. Those who are most regardful of the Sabbath and the sanctuary are the most attentive to all the other duties of life; and, indeed, one good work always prepares for another. Our nature is such that we need seasons, and forms, and places of worship. The mind must be approached through the medium of the body, and our communion with things unseen and eternal must be maintained by means of things temporal. God is to be glorified in our bodies as well as in our spirits, which are his. Under the Jewish dispensation there was a tabernacle and a temple.

Our Saviour attended in the synagogue and the temple. His followers are commanded not to forsake the assembling of themselves together, and in order to incite and encourage them he hath. said: “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” The public services of the sanctuary are indispensable to the maintenance of religion in a neighbourhood or country. In the sanctuary the various distinctions of life are preserved from becoming excessive. There the rich and the poor meet together in the presence of Him who is the Maker of them all. There are they reminded of their original equality- their final and their religious equality-and who has not often exclaimed,

“Lord, how delightful ’tis to see

A whole assembly worship thee;

At once they sing, at once they pray,

They hear of heaven, and learn the way.”

And how do the public services of the sanctuary enliven our affections! How much information is obtained while we see his beauty and inquire in his temple! What consolation is experienced there! “God is known in his palaces for a refuge.” The widow there draws to her knee her fatherless boy, and there she hears God is a father to the fatherless, and a judge of the widow in his holy habitation. There she hears: “Let thy widows trust in me;” and she departs rejoicing in the God of providence. Where is the Christian who has not said-

“In every new distress

We to his house repair;

We’ll think upon his wondrous grace,

And seek deliverance there.”