The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1905-12-27
THE PULPIT.
a BRILLIANT SUNDAY SERMON BY
THE REV. c. r. McNkllY.
Subject: Spiritual Worship.

ptedCueu OA tlC SuuJeCtS 1IC SpiAAl
God and Spiritual Worship" The text
was from John iy:23-24: 1.-THE hour
cometh and now is when the true
worshipers shall worship the Father
in spirit and in truth, for the Father
seeketh such to worship Him." GOD
is q spirit, and they that worship Hin
must worship Him in spirit and in
truth" Mr.. McNally said:
These. words might well lead into
the byways of philosophy. That, how
ever, is an enjoyment which we do
not now intend to permit ourselves to
indulge in. We might with profit
point out from these words that the
man of old did not think Of himself
Just as man thinks of himself today.
He was q unit, and thought Of nothing
| outside of his immediate environment.
and of that chiefly from the point Of
view of it's relation to his bodily. needs.
His mind did not grasp the thought of
the beyond or the hereafter. His dead
companion was not thought OF as be-
ing essentially different from that
which he was in life. His horse, his
tools, ETC., were buried with him,
with the belief that in some unseen
but material paradise or hunting
ground he would live as he had lived,
needing and using the same things.
Man does not now so view himself.
He no longer thinks Of himself as a
unit. He is divided. His body is one
thing and his mind or soul is another.
Man still views himself as body and
spirit. Deep within the inners of his
own nature he feels that while theEE
are doubtless closely associated, his
body is one thing and his soul quite
another. This distinction did not ap-
peal to the ancient. He knew nothing
of it. His was the simple, unquestlon-
ing life of a.child.
The religious impulse. however, has
!. always been an integral part of human
life, and has ever, in one form or an
other, sought to express itself. Crude
though it may have been in it's begin
nings, the consciousness of God has
never been absent from the human
mind. When it first appears it seems
to have been materialistic, or antllro-
pomorplic in the grossest sense. Grad
ually there was the development Of q
tendency to look in upon himself and
with this tendency mar came into pos
session of the idea of an inner thought
self. Thus mind. or soul, was dis
tinguished from the external or ma
terial, and q conception Of Co became
both q possibility and reality. The de-
velopment of this distinction may be
clearly traced in the Old Testament.
For many centuries the materialistic
was the dominant one, but alongside
of it grew up q religion of the spirit.
The former finds its highest expression
in the ornate formal worship OF Juda-
ism. The religion Of the law with
nil its material accompaniment was
the effort of the human mind to grasp
the thought of God in the terms Of
the material. Within. Judaism there
was the DEVELOPMENT of the religion
OF the spirit. The prophets were its
messengers, but the people persistently
turned away from them, and from
their message.
The conversation of Jesus with the
woman at the wellSide is interesting
and instructive in many ways. She
was n woman and the strain Of human
nature was very marked in her life rs
is shown by the fact that when Jesus
had her cornered and face to face with
her sin she was like many who have
followed her, anxious to divert the con-
yersation from considerations Of such
a personal nature to a religious argu-
ment. Jesus using her own thought
imparts to her the deepest lesson that
has ever been uttered in the realm
of religion. When the woman would
have Him discuss the. relative merits
of. formal Judaism, or formal Samari-
tanlsm, He turned upon her the full
light Of divine truth and declares what
the world has all been too slow to
learn, that Judaism and Samaritanlsm
are nothing, but that the religion OF
the spirit alone is essential religion.
God is spirit, and is not to be Wor-
SHIPPED by mems hands, or any ex-
ternal form whatsoever. He is con-
fined to no mountain top, no temple
walls inclose Him. Immaterial and
in~perceptible to the senses, He fills
all things with His being. He knows.
feels, and wills. He seeks those to
whom He has given a nature fash
ioned in His own image to be His
worshipers. Only those who have
learned to know Him as the Infinite
Mind or Supreme Spirit can have fell
lowship with Him, and this because
such worship alone corresponds with
His nature.
It takes the world a long time to
outgrow it's materialism, and to grow
into the thought of Christ. The path
of history has led into deep valleys
and over the mountain peaks. There
have been times when it seemed that
the ace was about to o out into q
more spiritual thought of God. Under
the leadership OF q Paul. an Augustine,
a Calvin, a Luther or a Wesley, the
dawn. Of a brighter day seemed at
hand, but from these mountain peaks
the pathway has invariably led down
into the low wales Of the material and
sordidly earthly.
We have been, indeed, We now are,
for the dawn Of the brighter day has
hardly appeared, in n of those ma
terialistfc Swamps from which arise
the miasma Of sordidness, ,worldliness
and sin. That this is peculiarly true
Of America is not without cause and
explanation. Never in the history OF
the world has it been given to 4 ma
ton to enter into the rich heritage that
has been ours. The past hundred
years has been a period Of discovery
and development. Discovery in that
America and the world has become
conscious of the almost ineXhaustible
wealth unfolded within the bosom Of
her lakes and rivers, her forests and
her fields and her deep hidden mines.
Wealth is the handmade Of comfort, of
ease, of luxury and many other things,
and these are sweet to the human
heart. There has been & mad rush to
lay hold upon these ready.to-hand