The only form of prayer which he has left us is manifestly intended primarily, not for secret worship, but for social worship.  The pronouns of the “Lord’s Prayer” are all in the plural number:  “Our father who art in heaven;” “Give us this day our daily bread.”  For solitary prayer these phrases are not suitable.

When he went away from his disciples he left them a great promise of the manifestation to them of that Spirit which had been given without measure to him; and he bade them tarry in Jerusalem until that promise should be fulfilled.  Accordingly they assembled, about one hundred and twenty of them, in an upper room in Jerusalem, and “continued steadfastly” in prayer together for many days.  The response to this prayer was that outpouring of the Spirit by which the apostolic church was inspired, and equipped for its work.  Saint Peter told the disciples that this was the gift of the ascended Christ,—­the fulfillment of his promise to them.  If this was true, it can hardly be conceived that he disapproved of the common prayer in answer to which this gift had come.

Nor can any reasonable interpreter of his words and deeds imagine that he intended his admonition in the sixth chapter of Matthew to be taken as a prohibition of public worship or of social prayer.  Those words were simply a reproof of ostentation in worship.  The Pharisees, whose conduct he is castigating, “loved to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they might be seen of men.”  It was a private and personal prayer, offered in a public place, to advertise the devotion of the worshiper.  With our private and personal prayers the public has no concern; it is a manifest indelicacy to thrust them before the public; the place for them is the secret chamber.  Individual sins and sorrows and needs we all have, and when we talk with our Father about them we ought to be alone with him; but we have also common sins and sorrows and needs, and it is well for us to be together when we talk with him about them.  It is therefore a gross perversion of these words of Jesus to quote them in condemnation of acts of public worship.  His entire life and the example of all those who were nearest to him, as well as the testimony of the best Christians in all the ages, unite to render such a notion incredible.

If I have succeeded in answering the cavils which seek to discredit the church as a social organization, and especially as an agency for the maintenance of social worship, let me go on to suggest some positive reasons for the existence of such an agency.