WORSHIP 79 



We call our meetings ** meetings for worship/* and 

 their name correctly sets forth their object. They are 

 meetings for worship. Now we have already seen that 

 two things are absolutely essential to true worship. 

 We must, of course, have communion with God. But 

 we must also have fellowship one with another, without 

 which no communion with God in any full sense is 

 possible. For how can we love God, Whom we have 

 not seen, if we love not our brother whom we have 

 seen, and who was made in the image of God ? You 

 will remember that wonderfully pregnant saying of Jesus, 

 '* If thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there remem- 

 berest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave 

 there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way. First 

 be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer 

 thy gift.*^ And many of us know, by bitter experience, 

 how impossible it is to worship God if we are out of 

 harmony with our fellow men. 



To worship rightly is to love each other. 

 Each smile a hymn, each kindly deed a prayer. 



Is then a Friends^ meeting the very best means 

 imaginable for the realisation of this human fellowship 

 in divine communion ? 



Personally, I think that it is. The meetings of the 

 Apostolic Church were held in almost precisely the same 

 way. That is to say, the members met as a brotherhood 

 without any social or religious distinctions. There 

 was no distinction between clergy and laity ; the gifts 

 of all were fully recognised and were freely made use of. 

 Moreover, so long as the meetings of the Primitive 

 Church retained their Quaker simplicity and spontaneity, 

 so long did the sense of brotherhood remain strong. 



And if the sense of brotherhood was strong in the 

 Primitive Church of the first century, it was not less 



6 



