The Newtown bee., 1906-03-09
ApvERrIslNa RATES :
THE HOME CIRCLE.
 WORSHIP A SERMON BY REV G. L. FORTE OF SOUTH BRITAIN.
WORSHIP.

A SERMON BY REV G. L. FORTE OF
 SOUTH BRITAIN.
 The human mind has ever been con- scious of superior being and of de- pendence upon him. This conscious ness of one who is supreme has always found expression in worship; and this nature. We have come in process of time to build churches in which to offer our homage, we have surrounded ourselves with an atmosphere which we say is worshipful and makes for worship. Enlightenment has brought us highly developed forms of speech, music, song and these com bined in 8 service have each their place and influence. We worship supreme being, and so large the part of our life is our belief that we bring to our aid the best that we have of liter ature, melody and architecture-in fact these have been enlarged and per fected because of and through our in- stincts of worship. The primitive man had no literature, no music, no dwell- ings, but he had, like us, a sense of de pendence upon one we call God, and
 
 Creator, hence he used the avenues at hand, the sun and moon, the sky, the winds, rivers, mountains, ram, fertil ity, the seasons. No one had revealed to him that power was a spirit, yet he was wiser than we think, as may be seen in Greek mythology for example, where all the forces of nature are per sOnihed. The mind of primitive man made no mistake; it thought that pow CT must come from persons which is so; therefore when the wind blew or the ocean was lashed to fury, or 1t thundered, the Greeks said Eolus comes from his cave, or Neptune is angry, or Jupiter is riding his iron chariot over brazen shields above. We know that there can be only one cen ter, one Creator, one God-the Creeks, Persians, Romans, and all savageS did not reason such an economy but they did acknowledge power, and wisdom and with us they gave in spirit hom age to whom homage is due; and thelr worship naturally was expressed through the medium of those things which to them seemed forces.
 THE SUN BRINGING WITH IT LIGHT, heat and life, would early come to be an object of worship; hence It is not strange that it's shape should have come to be symbolic of a religion and an influence in painting, sculpture and architecture. All doors, windows ard passage ways in China that are of account are rOund-often perfect cir cleS. That may be the suns influence from a prehistoric race handed down to succeeding ages; if not, it is the equally grand conception of eternity, or symmetry, or beauty felt and seen in the created universe of time and space and reproduced by man from the many patterns he sees in nature; a the moon, widening ring in the wa ter, the arched dome of the starry Armament! We have recently discov. cred that the ancient Egyptians, de- pending for harvests upon the yearly overflow of the Nile and the warm sun afterwards, came to worship of a River God and a Sun God. An obelisk represented ray of sunlight. The ASSyrianS, relying upon the wisdom of their leaders, the strength and swift ness of their soldiers, came to repre- sent in sculpture these powers; and so to-day on the walls of excavated Min eveh may be seen winged lions--swift, strong, alert, majestic. All tribes and nations have thus been affected; and enc and all they have tried to picture on skins or parchment, in stone, or in pillars or edifices, their Gods and their ideas of them. Thus have the arts grown and architecture been perfect ed. Athens in her golden age with her Parthenon, Corinth with her beautiful temple and her 1000 statues, Egypt with sphinx, obelisk, pyramids, Assyria with magnificent dwellings in honor of the gods, reSplendent with painted images, are all proof of man $ instinct of worship and of the develop ment in all lines that came from it. The first objects at hand were altars and means of propitiation.
 THE FIRST CENTURIES SAW
 only crude piles of stones with sacri- flee. Later human sacrifice began as was seen in China, India, or among the early Saxons. How awful yet how solemn and how intense was not the ceremony of human sacrifice among nook, encircled by tall, unhewn pillars of granite, with roof of spreading branches; the priest severe, bearded druid in long robes; the sacritice,a hu- man soul. The stiffness, the dark ness, the form recumbent upon it's stone bier, the white haired druid with knife ready to strike, these did not speak of murder or canniballsm or mere pastime in those primitive days of the stone age-they spoke the all controlling conviction that the great spirit requests homage and that WOr ship of him is to be at greatest cost and with most reverential approach.
 Savages have also taught us to wOr ship God through nature. They went from the manifestation to the thing we ought to go from the thing to God. Sunlight brings harveSts therefore the unenlightened bow down to the sun. We know that the sun and moon and stars have their appointed func- tions and orbits according to One who placed them there. The savage must needs worship something; he sees power, he feels dependent, he has, in short, because he is man, the in- stincts of worship in him; hence as God has not revealed himself as he has to us, the noble creature denied knowledge, falls down in despair before objects of wOod and of stone. How strong, how all.compelling, how