3. Know that the Lord he is God. Our worship must be intelligent. We ought to know whom we worship and
why. Only those who practically recognize his Godhead are at all likely to
offer acceptable praise. It is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves.
Some men call themselves “self-made
men,” and they adore their supposed creators; but Christians recognize the
origin of their being and their well-being, and take no honor to themselves
either for being, or for being what they are. Neither in our first or second
creation dare we put so much as a finger upon the glory, for it is the sole
right and property of the Almighty. To disclaim honor for ourselves is as
necessary a part of true reverence as to ascribe glory to the Lord. For our
part, we find it far more easy to believe that the Lord made us than that we
were developed by a long chain of natural selections from floating atoms which
fashioned themselves. We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
It is our honor to have been chosen from all the world besides to be his own
people, and our privilege to be therefore guided by his wisdom, tended by his
care, and fed by his bounty. Sheep gather around their shepherd and look up to
him; in the same manner let us gather around the great Shepherd of mankind. The
avowal of our relation to God is in itself praise; when we recount his goodness
we are rendering to him the best adoration. Our songs require none of the
inventions of fictions; the bare facts are enough; the simple narration of the
mercies of the Lord is more astonishing than the productions of imagination.
That we are the sheep of his pasture is a plain truth, and at the same time the
very essence of poetry.
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