It goes without saying that, for the highest forms of praise, we must have the conspiring voices of the great congregation.  We cannot let loose the hallelujahs in the closet; that would be almost as unseemly as to pray on the street corner.  If the Bible is any guide as to the forms which our worship should take, praise must constitute a large part of it.  And praise is mainly a social act.

Even the preaching gathers much of its impressiveness from the congregation.  The message which stirs the hearts of five hundred worshipers would make much less impression upon any one of them if he heard it alone.  It could not be given to him alone, as it is given to the five hundred; that is a psychological impossibility.  There is something in it when the five hundred hear it that is not in it when the single auditor hears it, and that something is, far and away, the best thing that it contains.

All these considerations show that public worship is essential to the vigorous maintenance of true religion.  The elements which it supplies to religion are vital elements.  Let no man imagine that by reading the Bible and good books at home, and by worshiping in his closet, or, as some are fond of saying, “in God’s first temples,” the life of religion can be successfully maintained.  It never has been maintained in that way, and it never will be.  When men forsake the assembling of themselves together for worship, there is no more reading the Bible and good books at home, and no more praying in the closet, much less in the woods.  Single individuals might, if the religious atmosphere of the community were kept vital round about them, continue to enjoy religion.  Invalids are often forced to deprive themselves of social worship; but if they are there in spirit, something of the benefit finds them.  But a community which deliberately abandoned social worship would be a community in which no private worship would long be maintained.

If, then, we agree that religion is an essential element in the life of mankind, we must see that it is necessary that some institution should exist which shall make provision for social and public worship.  The Christian church undertakes primarily to fulfill this function.  It has other large and important relations to society, of which we shall speak further on.  But this is its first concern.  I hope that it has been made evident in this discussion that it is a very important function.  I hope that those who read these pages may be able to see that if we are to have any religion in our land, the kind of work which the church undertakes to do cannot be neglected.  That the church is not doing this work as well as it ought to be done is true enough; we shall have all that before us presently; but the vital necessity of the work is not therefore disproved.  The work would be better done if those who now hold aloof, because they see its defects, would put their lives into the business of mending them.