But unless they keep in mind the mind of Christ, they are apt to fall into the mistake of using vain repetitions, as the heathen do; and of fancying, like them, that they shall be heard for their much speaking, forgetting their Father in heaven knows what they have need of, before they ask him.  And that is not like the mind of Christ.  It is not like the mind of Christ to fancy that God dwells in temples made with hands; or that he can be worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed anything; seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things.  For in him we live, and move, and have our being; and (as even the heathen poet knew), are the offspring, the children, of God.

It is not according to the mind of Christ, to worship God as the heathen do, in order to win him to do our will.  It is according to the mind of Christ to worship God, in order that we may do his will; to believe that God’s will is a good will, good in itself, and good for us, and for all things and beings; and, therefore, to ask for strength to do God’s will, whatever it may cost us.  That is the mind of Christ, who came not to do his own will, but the will of him who sent him; who taught us to pray, as the greatest blessing for which we can ask, ’Father, thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven;’ who himself, in his utter agony, cried, ’Father, not my will, but thine, be done.’

Therefore, it is good to go to church; and good, for some at least, to go as often as possible:  but only if we remember why we go, and whom we go to worship—­a Father, who asks of us to worship him in spirit and in truth.  A Father who has told us what that worship is like.

’Is this (God asked the Jews of old) the fast which I have chosen?  Is it a day for a man to afflict his soul, and bow down his head like a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him (playing at being sad, while God has not made him sad)?  Wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the Lord?’

’Is not this the fast which I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?  Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and to bring the poor that are cast out to thine house; when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him, and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh.’

This is that pure worship and undefined before God and the Father, of which St. James tells us; and says that it consists in this—­’to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction; and to keep ourselves unspotted from the world.’

In a word, this worship in the spirit, and in truth, is nought else but the mind of Christ.  To believe in, to adore the Father’s perfect goodness; to long and try to copy that goodness here on earth.  That is what Christ did utterly and perfectly, that is what we have to do, each according to our powers; and without it, without the spirit of obedience, all our church-going is of little worth in the eyes of our heavenly Father.