The world will never throb with new life until the spell of worship is
broken. Nothing holds mankind down so much as veneration for its idols.
Shake off the lethargy that worship has brought upon the soul. Live like
men, and you need not worship gods. When we live true to the soul we cease
to ask for anything. Worship is denial of self. Let us have no disputes
about divinity. Let God take care of himself. The light of the stars
proves their existence. The universe needs no counsel of defence. That
which is evident need not be explained.
The great question for us to answer is not what God wants, but what men
need. Let us live to ourselves. Worship is interruption. Let our life
satisfy. Worship is apology. If we are doing our best, what need to excuse
our work? What good does it do to praise God? That is the true love which
obeys, not that which adores. We want willing hands, not lifted ones.
Worship is superfluous. It adds nothing to the soul. It increases our
cares, not our virtues. The test of everything is, does it help man?
We challenge the church to prove its claim to man’s support. It throws a
shadow upon the earth instead of letting more light upon it. The priest is
in man’s way. Worship is a compliment to the deity that he does not need,
and a burden upon man which he is not able to bear. Nature does not
worship. She grows. Worship is opposition to reform. It palsies the
world’s thought. It means stagnation. It is difficult to get advocated
what will correct society, because mankind spends so much time in the
church that it has no time to spend in the theatre of improvement. Worship
is hypocrisy’s disguise. What a train of splendid deceit marches up the
aisles of the church! What a mask is worship, but the world can see
through it. When falsehood kneels in praise of truth; when extortion and
cruelty call God father; when meanness and vice are the disciples of
Jesus, and when crime and sin say, “Thy will be done,” the name of
religion is a blush on the forehead of the world.
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We would not dethrone the world’s heroes. The more human beings we can get
the world to honor and respect the better humanity will be, but when a man
or woman has been for ages almost worshipped by the world; when time, with
its forgiving hand, has erased deed after deed until naught else is left
of the man or woman but a holy memory, an unreal soul, whose virtues are
as ghostly as shadows cast by the moon, it behooves us to look with
unprejudiced mind at this phantom of existence and to see with naked eye
this object of adoration, for one may be certain that beneath the idol’s
robes will be found a human form and with it all the peculiarities of
human nature.