It is by the essentials that we live and make progress.  The man who apprehends such a statement of doctrine as the Athanasian creed affords, as a sweet and gracious mystery, thereby draws nearer to God.  But if he goes further and says, “The essence of my finding inspiration in any particular creed is that I should believe it to be absolutely and literally true, and that all outside it are thieves and robbers, or at the best ignorant and misguided persons,” then he stumbles at the very outset.  His own belief is probably true in the sense that the truth doubtless transcends and embraces all spiritual light hopefully discerned; but the moment that a man condemns those who do not exactly agree with himself, he sins against the Spirit.  Is it not a ghastly and inconceivable thought that Christ should have authorised that men should be brought to the light by persecution?  Or that any of his words could be so foully distorted as to lend the least excuse to such a principle of action?  It matters not what kind of persecution is employed, whether it be mental or physical.  The essence is that men should so apprehend God as to desire to draw nearer to him, and that they should be goaded or coerced or terrified into submission is intolerable.

The true worshipper is the man who at no specified place or time, but as naturally as he breathes or sleeps, opens his heart to God and prays for holy influences to guard and guide him.  There are some who have a quickened sense of fellowship and unity, when such prayers and aspirations are uttered in concert; but the error is to desire merely the bodily presence of one’s fellow-creatures for such a purpose, rather than their mental and spiritual acquiescence.  The result of such a desire is that it is often taught, or at all events believed, that there is a kind of merit in the attendance at public worship.  The only merit of it lies in the case of those who sacrifice a personal disinclination to the desire to testify sympathy for the religious life.  It is no more meritorious for those who personally enjoy it, than it is for a lover of pictures to go to a picture-gallery, for thus the hunger of the spirit is satisfied.

It would be better, perhaps, if it were frankly realised and recognised that it is a special taste, a peculiar vocation.  It would be better if those who loved liturgical worship desired only the companionship of like-minded people; better still if it were recognised that there is no necessary connection between liturgical worship and morality at all, except in so far that all pure spiritual instincts are on the side of morality.  But so far from holding it to be a duty for a man to protest against the importance attached to worship by liturgically-minded people, I should hold it to be a duty for all spiritually-minded men to show as much active sympathy as they can for a practice which is to many persons a unique and special channel of spiritual grace.