worship

• defined as › choosing to abide by Father’s will
• practice of worship › must be voluntary

1:1.2The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther never im­poses any form of ar­bi­trary rec­og­ni­tion, for­mal wor­ship, or slav­ish ser­vice upon the in­tel­li­gent will crea­tures of the uni­verses. The evo­lu­tion­ary in­hab­i­tants of the worlds of time and space must of them­selves—in their own hearts—rec­og­nize, love, and vol­un­tar­ily wor­ship him. The Cre­ator re­fuses to co­erce or com­pel the sub­mis­sion of the spir­i­tual free wills of his ma­te­rial crea­tures. The af­fec­tion­ate ded­i­ca­tion of the hu­man will to the do­ing of the Fa­ther’s will is man’s choic­est gift to God; in fact, such a con­se­cra­tion of crea­ture will con­sti­tutes man’s only pos­si­ble gift of true value to the Par­a­dise Fa­ther. In God, man lives, moves, and has his be­ing; there is noth­ing which man can give to God ex­cept this choos­ing to abide by the Fa­ther’s will, and such de­ci­sions, ef­fected by the in­tel­li­gent will crea­tures of the uni­verses, con­sti­tute the re­al­ity of that true wor­ship which is so sat­is­fy­ing to the love-dom­i­nated na­ture of the Cre­ator Fa­ther.

• defined as › highest privilege and first duty

2:5.6How un­rea­son­able that you should not wor­ship God be­cause the lim­i­ta­tions of hu­man na­ture and the hand­i­caps of your ma­te­rial cre­ation make it im­pos­si­ble for you to see him. Be­tween you and God there is a tremen­dous dis­tance (phys­i­cal space) to be tra­versed. There like­wise ex­ists a great gulf of spir­i­tual dif­fer­en­tial which must be bridged; but not­with­stand­ing all that phys­i­cally and spir­i­tu­ally sep­a­rates you from the Par­a­dise per­sonal pres­ence of God, stop and pon­der the solemn fact that God lives within you; he has in his own way al­ready bridged the gulf. He has sent of him­self, his spirit, to live in you and to toil with you as you pur­sue your eter­nal uni­verse ca­reer.

2:5.7I find it easy and pleas­ant to wor­ship one who is so great and at the same time so af­fec­tion­ately de­voted to the up­lift­ing min­istry of his lowly crea­tures. I nat­u­rally love one who is so pow­er­ful in cre­ation and in the con­trol thereof, and yet who is so per­fect in good­ness and so faith­ful in the lov­ing-kind­ness which con­stantly over­shad­ows us. I think I would love God just as much if he were not so great and pow­er­ful, as long as he is so good and mer­ci­ful. We all love the Fa­ther more be­cause of his na­ture than in rec­og­ni­tion of his amaz­ing at­tri­butes.

• practice of worship › worship of nature improper

4:2.6Na­ture, on your world, is a qual­i­fi­ca­tion of the laws of per­fec­tion by the evo­lu­tion­ary plans of the lo­cal uni­verse. What a trav­esty to wor­ship na­ture be­cause it is in a lim­ited, qual­i­fied sense per­vaded by God; be­cause it is a phase of the uni­ver­sal and, there­fore, di­vine power! Na­ture also is a man­i­fes­ta­tion of the un­fin­ished, the in­com­plete, the im­per­fect out­work­ings of the de­vel­op­ment, growth, and prog­ress of a uni­verse ex­per­i­ment in cos­mic evo­lu­tion.

• practice of worship › worship of nature improper

4:2.8And na­ture is marred, her beau­ti­ful face is scarred, her fea­tures are seared, by the re­bel­lion, the mis­con­duct, the mis­think­ing of the myr­i­ads of crea­tures who are a part of na­ture, but who have con­tributed to her dis­fig­ure­ment in time. No, na­ture is not God. Na­ture is not an ob­ject of wor­ship.

• we w. the experience-idea of God, though we crave concept of the Infinite

4:4.8We crave the con­cept of the In­fi­nite, but we wor­ship the ex­pe­ri­ence-idea of God, our any­where and any-time ca­pac­ity to grasp the per­son­al­ity and di­vin­ity fac­tors of our high­est con­cept of De­ity.

• practice of worship › worship should be directed to Father only

5:3.1Though the Par­a­dise De­i­ties, from the uni­verse stand­point, are as one, in their spir­i­tual re­la­tions with such be­ings as in­habit Uran­tia they are also three dis­tinct and sep­a­rate per­sons. There is a dif­fer­ence be­tween the God­heads in the mat­ter of per­sonal ap­peals, com­mu­nion, and other in­ti­mate re­la­tions. In the high­est sense, we wor­ship the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and him only. True, we can and do wor­ship the Fa­ther as he is man­i­fested in his Cre­ator Sons, but it is the Fa­ther, di­rectly or in­di­rectly, who is wor­shiped and adored.

• conveyed to Father by Adjusters, personality circuit

5:3.2Sup­pli­ca­tions of all kinds be­long to the realm of the Eter­nal Son and the Son’s spir­i­tual or­ga­ni­za­tion. Prayers, all for­mal com­mu­ni­ca­tions, ev­ery­thing ex­cept ado­ra­tion and wor­ship of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, are mat­ters that con­cern a lo­cal uni­verse; they do not or­di­nar­ily pro­ceed out of the realm of the ju­ris­dic­tion of a Cre­ator Son. But wor­ship is un­doubt­edly en­cir­cuited and dis­patched to the per­son of the Cre­ator by the func­tion of the Fa­ther’s per­son­al­ity cir­cuit. We fur­ther be­lieve that such reg­istry of the homage of an Ad­juster-in­dwelt crea­ture is fa­cil­i­tated by the Fa­ther’s spirit pres­ence. There ex­ists a tremen­dous amount of ev­i­dence to sub­stan­ti­ate such a be­lief, and I know that all or­ders of Fa­ther frag­ments are em­pow­ered to reg­is­ter the bona fide ado­ra­tion of their sub­jects ac­cept­ably in the pres­ence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. The Ad­justers un­doubt­edly also uti­lize di­rect preper­sonal chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with God, and they are like­wise able to uti­lize the spirit-grav­ity cir­cuits of the Eter­nal Son.

• defined as › spontaneous reaction to Father’s personality
• practice of worship › for its own sake; worship asks and expects nothing

5:3.3Wor­ship is for its own sake; prayer em­bod­ies a self- or crea­ture-in­ter­est el­e­ment; that is the great dif­fer­ence be­tween wor­ship and prayer. There is ab­so­lutely no self-re­quest or other el­e­ment of per­sonal in­ter­est in true wor­ship; we sim­ply wor­ship God for what we com­pre­hend him to be. Wor­ship asks noth­ing and ex­pects noth­ing for the wor­shiper. We do not wor­ship the Fa­ther be­cause of any­thing we may de­rive from such ven­er­a­tion; we ren­der such de­vo­tion and en­gage in such wor­ship as a nat­u­ral and spon­ta­neous re­ac­tion to the rec­og­ni­tion of the Fa­ther’s match­less per­son­al­ity and be­cause of his lov­able na­ture and adorable at­tri­butes.

5:3.4The mo­ment the el­e­ment of self-in­ter­est in­trudes upon wor­ship, that in­stant de­vo­tion trans­lates from wor­ship to prayer and more ap­pro­pri­ately should be di­rected to the per­son of the Eter­nal Son or the Cre­ator Son. But in prac­ti­cal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence there ex­ists no rea­son why prayer should not be ad­dressed to God the Fa­ther as a part of true wor­ship.

• practice of worship › worship should be directed to Father only

5:3.5When you deal with the prac­ti­cal af­fairs of your daily life, you are in the hands of the spirit per­son­al­i­ties hav­ing ori­gin in the Third Source and Cen­ter; you are co-op­er­at­ing with the agen­cies of the Con­joint Ac­tor. And so it is: You wor­ship God; pray to, and com­mune with, the Son; and work out the de­tails of your earthly so­journ in con­nec­tion with the in­tel­li­gences of the In­fi­nite Spirit op­er­at­ing on your world and through­out your uni­verse.

5:3.6The Cre­ator or Sov­er­eign Sons who pre­side over the des­tinies of the lo­cal uni­verses stand in the place of both the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and the Eter­nal Son of Par­a­dise. These Uni­verse Sons re­ceive, in the name of the Fa­ther, the ado­ra­tion of wor­ship and give ear to the pleas of their pe­ti­tion­ing sub­jects through­out their re­spec­tive cre­ations. To the chil­dren of a lo­cal uni­verse a Mi­chael Son is, to all prac­ti­cal in­tents and pur­poses, God. He is the lo­cal uni­verse per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and the Eter­nal Son. The In­fi­nite Spirit main­tains per­sonal con­tact with the chil­dren of these realms through the Uni­verse Spir­its, the ad­min­is­tra­tive and cre­ative as­so­ciates of the Par­a­dise Cre­ator Sons.

• defined as › communication with God to which mind assents, Adjuster conducts
• defined as › mobilization of all powers of personality under dominance of soul; directed by Adjuster

5:3.7Sin­cere wor­ship con­notes the mo­bi­liza­tion of all the pow­ers of the hu­man per­son­al­ity un­der the dom­i­nance of the evolv­ing soul and sub­ject to the di­vine di­rec­tion­iza­tion of the as­so­ci­ated Thought Ad­juster. The mind of ma­te­rial lim­i­ta­tions can never be­come highly con­scious of the real sig­nif­i­cance of true wor­ship. Man’s re­al­iza­tion of the re­al­ity of the wor­ship ex­pe­ri­ence is chiefly de­ter­mined by the de­vel­op­men­tal sta­tus of his evolv­ing im­mor­tal soul. The spir­i­tual growth of the soul takes place wholly in­de­pen­dently of the in­tel­lec­tual self-con­scious­ness.

5:3.8The wor­ship ex­pe­ri­ence con­sists in the sub­lime at­tempt of the be­trothed Ad­juster to com­mu­ni­cate to the di­vine Fa­ther the in­ex­press­ible long­ings and the un­ut­ter­able as­pi­ra­tions of the hu­man soul—the con­joint cre­ation of the God-seek­ing mor­tal mind and the God-re­veal­ing im­mor­tal Ad­juster. Wor­ship is, there­fore, the act of the ma­te­rial mind’s as­sent­ing to the at­tempt of its spir­i­tu­al­iz­ing self, un­der the guid­ance of the as­so­ci­ated spirit, to com­mu­ni­cate with God as a faith son of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. The mor­tal mind con­sents to wor­ship; the im­mor­tal soul craves and ini­ti­ates wor­ship; the di­vine Ad­juster pres­ence con­ducts such wor­ship in be­half of the mor­tal mind and the evolv­ing im­mor­tal soul. True wor­ship, in the last anal­y­sis, be­comes an ex­pe­ri­ence re­al­ized on four cos­mic lev­els: the in­tel­lec­tual, the mor­ontial, the spir­i­tual, and the per­sonal—the con­scious­ness of mind, soul, and spirit, and their uni­fi­ca­tion in per­son­al­ity.

• quality of w. determined by depth of perception

5:4.8The Greek re­li­gion had a watch­word “Know your­self”; the He­brews cen­tered their teach­ing on “Know your God”; the Chris­tians preach a gospel aimed at a “knowl­edge of the Lord Je­sus Christ”; Je­sus pro­claimed the good news of “know­ing God, and your­self as a son of God.” These dif­fer­ing con­cepts of the pur­pose of re­li­gion de­ter­mine the in­di­vid­ual’s at­ti­tude in var­i­ous life sit­u­a­tions and fore­shadow the depth of wor­ship and the na­ture of his per­sonal habits of prayer. The spir­i­tual sta­tus of any re­li­gion may be de­ter­mined by the na­ture of its prayers.

• consciousness of universe fellowship through

5:5.2Re­li­gion is not grounded in the facts of sci­ence, the obli­ga­tions of so­ci­ety, the as­sump­tions of phi­los­o­phy, or the im­plied du­ties of moral­ity. Re­li­gion is an in­de­pen­dent realm of hu­man re­sponse to life sit­u­a­tions and is un­fail­ingly ex­hib­ited at all stages of hu­man de­vel­op­ment which are post­moral. Re­li­gion may per­me­ate all four lev­els of the re­al­iza­tion of val­ues and the en­joy­ment of uni­verse fel­low­ship: the phys­i­cal or ma­te­rial level of self-preser­va­tion; the so­cial or emo­tional level of fel­low­ship; the moral or duty level of rea­son; the spir­i­tual level of the con­scious­ness of uni­verse fel­low­ship through di­vine wor­ship.

• adoration of abstract beautiful, exaltation of nature is not w.

5:5.4Moral con­duct is al­ways an an­te­ced­ent of evolved re­li­gion and a part of even re­vealed re­li­gion, but never the whole of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. So­cial ser­vice is the re­sult of moral think­ing and re­li­gious liv­ing. Moral­ity does not bi­o­log­i­cally lead to the higher spir­i­tual lev­els of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. The ado­ra­tion of the ab­stract beau­ti­ful is not the wor­ship of God; nei­ther is ex­al­ta­tion of na­ture nor the rev­er­ence of unity the wor­ship of God.

• conveyed to Father by Adjusters, personality circuit

5:6.11As all grav­ity is cir­cuited in the Isle of Par­a­dise, as all mind is cir­cuited in the Con­joint Ac­tor and all spirit in the Eter­nal Son, so is all per­son­al­ity cir­cuited in the per­sonal pres­ence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, and this cir­cuit unerringly trans­mits the wor­ship of all per­son­al­i­ties to the Orig­i­nal and Eter­nal Per­son­al­ity.

• of Father is also worship of Eternal Son, Infinite Spirit

6:2.3In na­ture the Son is wholly like the spirit Fa­ther. When we wor­ship the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, ac­tu­ally we at the same time wor­ship God the Son and God the Spirit. God the Son is just as di­vinely real and eter­nal in na­ture as God the Fa­ther.

• defined as › acknowledging personal relationship with Creators
• defined as › highest insight of cosmic mind
• defined as › sincere pursuit of divine values, wholehearted love of God

16:6.83. Wor­ship—the spir­i­tual do­main of the re­al­ity of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, the per­sonal re­al­iza­tion of di­vine fel­low­ship, the rec­og­ni­tion of spirit val­ues, the as­sur­ance of eter­nal sur­vival, the as­cent from the sta­tus of ser­vants of God to the joy and lib­erty of the sons of God. This is the high­est in­sight of the cos­mic mind, the rev­er­en­tial and wor­ship­ful form of the cos­mic dis­crim­i­na­tion.

• defined as › sincere pursuit of divine values, wholehearted love of God

16:8.147. Wor­ship, the sin­cere pur­suit of di­vine val­ues and the whole­hearted love of the di­vine Value-Giver.

• practice of worship › first, because God is

16:9.14You be­come con­scious of man as your crea­ture brother be­cause you are al­ready con­scious of God as your Cre­ator Fa­ther. Fa­ther­hood is the re­la­tion­ship out of which we rea­son our­selves into the rec­og­ni­tion of broth­er­hood. And Fa­ther­hood be­comes, or may be­come, a uni­verse re­al­ity to all moral crea­tures be­cause the Fa­ther has him­self be­stowed per­son­al­ity upon all such be­ings and has en­cir­cuited them within the grasp of the uni­ver­sal per­son­al­ity cir­cuit. We wor­ship God, first, be­cause he is, then, be­cause he is in us, and last, be­cause we are in him.

• Those without Name and Number have superior ability in

22:4.1Those with­out Name and Num­ber con­sti­tute the third and last group of the Trin­i­tized Sons of At­tain­ment; they are the as­cen­dant souls who have de­vel­oped the abil­ity to wor­ship be­yond the skill of all the sons and daugh­ters of the evo­lu­tion­ary races from the worlds of time and space. They have ac­quired a spir­i­tual con­cept of the eter­nal pur­pose of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther which com­par­a­tively tran­scends the com­pre­hen­sion of the evo­lu­tion­ary crea­tures of name or num­ber; there­fore are they de­nom­i­nated Those with­out Name and Num­ber. More strictly trans­lated, their name would be “Those above Name and Num­ber.”

• defined as › acknowledging personal relationship with Creators
• defined as › highest privilege and first duty
• quality of w. determined by depth of perception

27:7.1Wor­ship is the high­est priv­i­lege and the first duty of all cre­ated in­tel­li­gences. Wor­ship is the con­scious and joy­ous act of rec­og­niz­ing and ac­knowl­edg­ing the truth and fact of the in­ti­mate and per­sonal re­la­tion­ships of the Cre­ators with their crea­tures. The qual­ity of wor­ship is de­ter­mined by the depth of crea­ture per­cep­tion; and as the knowl­edge of the in­fi­nite char­ac­ter of the Gods pro­gresses, the act of wor­ship be­comes in­creas­ingly all-en­com­pass­ing un­til it even­tu­ally at­tains the glory of the high­est ex­pe­ri­en­tial de­light and the most ex­qui­site plea­sure known to cre­ated be­ings.

• on Paradise › highest joy of existence

27:7.2While the Isle of Par­a­dise con­tains cer­tain places of wor­ship, it is more nearly one vast sanc­tu­ary of di­vine ser­vice. Wor­ship is the first and dom­i­nant pas­sion of all who climb to its bliss­ful shores—the spon­ta­neous ebul­li­tion of the be­ings who have learned enough of God to at­tain his pres­ence. Cir­cle by cir­cle, dur­ing the in­ward jour­ney through Ha­vona, wor­ship is a grow­ing pas­sion un­til on Par­a­dise it be­comes nec­es­sary to di­rect and oth­er­wise con­trol its ex­pres­sion.

• on Paradise › periodically dispersed by chiefs of assignment

27:7.3The pe­ri­odic, spon­ta­neous, group, and other spe­cial out­bursts of su­preme ado­ra­tion and spir­i­tual praise en­joyed on Par­a­dise are con­ducted un­der the lead­er­ship of a spe­cial corps of pri­mary super­na­phim. Un­der the di­rec­tion of these con­duc­tors of wor­ship, such homage achieves the crea­ture goal of su­preme plea­sure and at­tains the heights of the per­fec­tion of sub­lime self-ex­pres­sion and per­sonal en­joy­ment. All pri­mary super­na­phim crave to be con­duc­tors of wor­ship; and all as­cen­dant be­ings would en­joy for­ever re­main­ing in the at­ti­tude of wor­ship did not the chiefs of as­sign­ment pe­ri­od­i­cally dis­perse these as­sem­blages. But no as­cen­dant be­ing is ever re­quired to en­ter upon the as­sign­ments of eter­nal ser­vice un­til he has at­tained full sat­is­fac­tion in wor­ship.

27:7.4It is the task of the con­duc­tors of wor­ship so to teach the as­cen­dant crea­tures how to wor­ship that they may be en­abled to gain this sat­is­fac­tion of self-ex­pres­sion and at the same time be able to give at­ten­tion to the es­sen­tial ac­tiv­i­ties of the Par­a­dise regime. With­out im­prove­ment in the tech­nique of wor­ship it would re­quire hun­dreds of years for the av­er­age mor­tal who reaches Par­a­dise to give full and sat­is­fac­tory ex­pres­sion to his emo­tions of in­tel­li­gent ap­pre­ci­a­tion and as­cen­dant grat­i­tude. The con­duc­tors of wor­ship open up new and hith­erto un­known av­enues of ex­pres­sion so that these won­der­ful chil­dren of the womb of space and the tra­vail of time are en­abled to gain the full sat­is­fac­tions of wor­ship in much less time.

• on Paradise › highest joy of existence

27:7.5All the arts of all the be­ings of the en­tire uni­verse which are ca­pa­ble of in­ten­si­fy­ing and ex­alt­ing the abil­i­ties of self-ex­pres­sion and the con­veyance of ap­pre­ci­a­tion, are em­ployed to their high­est ca­pac­ity in the wor­ship of the Par­a­dise De­i­ties. Wor­ship is the high­est joy of Par­a­dise ex­is­tence; it is the re­fresh­ing play of Par­a­dise. What play does for your jaded minds on earth, wor­ship will do for your per­fected souls on Par­a­dise. The mode of wor­ship on Par­a­dise is ut­terly be­yond mor­tal com­pre­hen­sion, but the spirit of it you can be­gin to ap­pre­ci­ate even down here on Uran­tia, for the spir­its of the Gods even now in­dwell you, hover over you, and in­spire you to true wor­ship.

• on Paradise › always exceeds preparation for
• on Paradise › periodically dispersed by chiefs of assignment
• on Paradise › produces joy and satisfaction in Paradise Deities

27:7.6There are ap­pointed times and places for wor­ship on Par­a­dise, but these are not ad­e­quate to ac­com­mo­date the ever-in­creas­ing over­flow of the spir­i­tual emo­tions of the grow­ing in­tel­li­gence and ex­pand­ing di­vin­ity rec­og­ni­tion of the bril­liant be­ings of ex­pe­ri­en­tial as­cen­sion to the eter­nal Isle. Never since the times of Grand­fanda have the super­na­phim been able fully to ac­com­mo­date the spirit of wor­ship on Par­a­dise. Al­ways is there an ex­cess of wor­ship­ful­ness as gauged by the prepa­ra­tion there­for. And this is be­cause per­son­al­i­ties of in­her­ent per­fec­tion never can fully ap­pre­ci­ate the tremen­dous re­ac­tions of the spir­i­tual emo­tions of be­ings who have slowly and la­bo­ri­ously made their way up­ward to Par­a­dise glory from the depths of the spir­i­tual dark­ness of the lower worlds of time and space. When such an­gels and mor­tals of time at­tain the pres­ence of the Pow­ers of Par­a­dise, there oc­curs the ex­pres­sion of the ac­cu­mu­lated emo­tions of the ages, a spec­ta­cle as­tound­ing to the an­gels of Par­a­dise and pro­duc­tive of the su­preme joy of di­vine sat­is­fac­tion in the Par­a­dise De­i­ties.

• on Paradise › threefold fluctuation of light from Deity abode

27:7.7Some­times all Par­a­dise be­comes en­gulfed in a dom­i­nat­ing tide of spir­i­tual and wor­ship­ful ex­pres­sion. Of­ten the con­duc­tors of wor­ship can­not con­trol such phe­nom­ena un­til the ap­pear­ance of the three­fold fluc­tu­a­tion of the light of the De­ity abode, sig­ni­fy­ing that the di­vine heart of the Gods has been fully and com­pletely sat­is­fied by the sin­cere wor­ship of the res­i­dents of Par­a­dise, the per­fect cit­i­zens of glory and the as­cen­dant crea­tures of time. What a tri­umph of tech­nique! What a fruition of the eter­nal plan and pur­pose of the Gods that the in­tel­li­gent love of the crea­ture child should give full sat­is­fac­tion to the in­fi­nite love of the Cre­ator Fa­ther!

• on Paradise › admission to finaliter corps after full attainment

27:7.8Af­ter the at­tain­ment of the su­preme sat­is­fac­tion of the full­ness of wor­ship, you are qual­i­fied for ad­mis­sion to the Corps of the Fi­nal­ity. The as­cen­dant ca­reer is well-nigh fin­ished, and the sev­enth ju­bilee pre­pares for cel­e­bra­tion. The first ju­bilee marked the mor­tal agree­ment with the Thought Ad­juster when the pur­pose to sur­vive was sealed; the sec­ond was the awak­en­ing in the mor­ontia life; the third was the fu­sion with the Thought Ad­juster; the fourth was the awak­en­ing in Ha­vona; the fifth cel­e­brated the find­ing of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther; and the sixth ju­bilee was the oc­ca­sion of the Par­a­dise awak­en­ing from the fi­nal tran­sit slum­ber of time. The sev­enth ju­bilee marks en­trance into the mor­tal fi­nal­i­ter corps and the be­gin­ning of the eter­nity ser­vice. The at­tain­ment of the sev­enth stage of spirit re­al­iza­tion by a fi­nal­i­ter will prob­a­bly sig­nal­ize the cel­e­bra­tion of the first of the ju­bilees of eter­nity.

27:7.9And thus ends the story of the Par­a­dise super­na­phim, the high­est or­der of all the min­is­ter­ing spir­its, those be­ings who, as a uni­ver­sal class, ever at­tend you from the world of your ori­gin un­til you are fi­nally bid­den farewell by the con­duc­tors of wor­ship as you take the Trin­ity oath of eter­nity and are mus­tered into the Mor­tal Corps of the Fi­nal­ity.

27:7.10The end­less ser­vice of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity is about to be­gin; and now the fi­nal­i­ter is face to face with the chal­lenge of God the Ul­ti­mate.

27:7.11[Pre­sented by a Per­fec­tor of Wis­dom from Uversa.]

• practice of worship › worship should be directed to Father only

38:2.5You do well to love them, but you should not adore them; an­gels are not ob­jects of wor­ship. The great ser­a­phim, Loy­ala­tia, when your seer “fell down to wor­ship be­fore the feet of the an­gel,” said: “See that you do it not; I am a fel­low ser­vant with you and with your races, who are all en­joined to wor­ship God.”

• practice of worship › worshipful contemplation of God the Supreme

43:6.3Cen­trally lo­cated in this mag­nif­i­cent gar­den is the wor­ship shrine of the Most Highs. The Psalmist must have known some­thing about these things, for he wrote: “Who shall as­cend the hill of the Most Highs? Who shall stand in this holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to van­ity nor sworn de­ceit­fully.” At this shrine the Most Highs, on ev­ery tenth day of re­lax­ation, lead all Eden­tia in the wor­ship­ful con­tem­pla­tion of God the Su­preme.

• defined as › reciprocal contact with divinity

52:1.7All mor­tals who are in­dwelt by Thought Ad­justers are po­ten­tial wor­shipers; they have been “lighted by the true light,” and they pos­sess ca­pac­ity for seek­ing re­cip­ro­cal con­tact with di­vin­ity. Nev­er­the­less, the early or bi­o­logic re­li­gion of prim­i­tive man is largely a per­sis­tence of an­i­mal fear cou­pled with ig­no­rant awe and tribal su­per­sti­tion. The sur­vival of su­per­sti­tion in the Uran­tia races is hardly com­pli­men­tary to your evo­lu­tion­ary de­vel­op­ment nor com­pat­i­ble with your oth­er­wise splen­did achieve­ments in ma­te­rial prog­ress. But this early fear re­li­gion serves a very valu­able pur­pose in sub­du­ing the fiery tem­pers of these prim­i­tive crea­tures. It is the fore­run­ner of civ­i­liza­tion and the soil for the sub­se­quent plant­ing of the seeds of re­vealed re­li­gion by the Plan­e­tary Prince and his min­is­ters.

• practice of worship › worship should be directed to Father only

56:4.5Phil­o­soph­i­cally, cos­mi­cally, and with ref­er­ence to dif­fer­en­tial lev­els and lo­ca­tions of man­i­fes­ta­tion, you may and per­force must con­ceive of the func­tion­ing of plu­ral De­i­ties and pos­tu­late the ex­is­tence of plu­ral Trin­i­ties; but in the wor­ship­ful ex­pe­ri­ence of the per­sonal con­tact of ev­ery wor­ship­ing per­son­al­ity through­out the mas­ter uni­verse, God is one; and that uni­fied and per­sonal De­ity is our Par­a­dise par­ent, God the Fa­ther, the be­stower, con­ser­va­tor, and Fa­ther of all per­son­al­i­ties from mor­tal man on the in­hab­ited worlds to the Eter­nal Son on the cen­tral Isle of Light.

• primitives worshiped › animals

63:6.3The An­don­ites early de­vel­oped a fear of the el­e­ments—thun­der, light­ning, rain, snow, hail, and ice. But hunger was the con­stantly re­cur­ring urge of these early days, and since they largely sub­sisted on an­i­mals, they even­tu­ally evolved a form of an­i­mal wor­ship. To An­don, the larger food an­i­mals were sym­bols of cre­ative might and sus­tain­ing power. From time to time it be­came the cus­tom to des­ig­nate var­i­ous of these larger an­i­mals as ob­jects of wor­ship. Dur­ing the vogue of a par­tic­u­lar an­i­mal, crude out­lines of it would be drawn on the walls of the caves, and later on, as con­tin­ued prog­ress was made in the arts, such an an­i­mal god was en­graved on var­i­ous or­na­ments.

63:6.4Very early the An­donic peo­ples formed the habit of re­frain­ing from eat­ing the flesh of the an­i­mal of tribal ven­er­a­tion. Pres­ently, in or­der more suit­ably to im­press the minds of their youths, they evolved a cer­e­mony of rev­er­ence which was car­ried out about the body of one of these ven­er­ated an­i­mals; and still later on, this prim­i­tive per­for­mance de­vel­oped into the more elab­o­rate sac­ri­fi­cial cer­e­monies of their de­scen­dants. And this is the ori­gin of sac­ri­fices as a part of wor­ship. This idea was elab­o­rated by Moses in the He­brew rit­ual and was pre­served, in prin­ci­ple, by the Apos­tle Paul as the doc­trine of atone­ment for sin by “the shed­ding of blood.”

• primitives worshiped › animals

64:4.12Dur­ing these spir­i­tu­ally dark ages the cul­ture of su­per­sti­tious man­kind reached its low­est lev­els. The Ne­an­derthalers re­ally had no re­li­gion be­yond a shame­ful su­per­sti­tion. They were deathly afraid of clouds, more es­pe­cially of mists and fogs. A prim­i­tive re­li­gion of the fear of nat­u­ral forces grad­u­ally de­vel­oped, while an­i­mal wor­ship de­clined as im­prove­ment in tools, with abun­dance of game, en­abled these peo­ple to live with less­ened anx­i­ety about food; the sex re­wards of the chase tended greatly to im­prove hunt­ing skill. This new re­li­gion of fear led to at­tempts to pla­cate the in­vis­i­ble forces be­hind these nat­u­ral el­e­ments and cul­mi­nated, later on, in the sac­ri­fic­ing of hu­mans to ap­pease these in­vis­i­ble and un­known phys­i­cal forces. And this ter­ri­ble prac­tice of hu­man sac­ri­fice has been per­pet­u­ated by the more back­ward peo­ples of Uran­tia right on down to the twen­ti­eth cen­tury.

• primitives worshiped › fire; lightning

69:6.4Though An­don, the dis­cov­erer of fire, avoided treat­ing it as an ob­ject of wor­ship, many of his de­scen­dants re­garded the flame as a fe­tish or as a spirit. They failed to reap the san­i­tary ben­e­fits of fire be­cause they would not burn refuse. Prim­i­tive man feared fire and al­ways sought to keep it in good hu­mor, hence the sprin­kling of in­cense. Un­der no cir­cum­stances would the an­cients spit in a fire, nor would they ever pass be­tween any­one and a burn­ing fire. Even the iron pyrites and flints used in strik­ing fire were held sa­cred by early man­kind.

69:6.5It was a sin to ex­tin­guish a flame; if a hut caught fire, it was al­lowed to burn. The fires of the tem­ples and shrines were sa­cred and were never per­mit­ted to go out ex­cept that it was the cus­tom to kin­dle new flames an­nu­ally or af­ter some calamity. Women were se­lected as priests be­cause they were cus­to­di­ans of the home fires.

69:6.6The early myths about how fire came down from the gods grew out of the ob­ser­va­tions of fire caused by light­ning. These ideas of super­nat­u­ral ori­gin led di­rectly to fire wor­ship, and fire wor­ship led to the cus­tom of “pass­ing through fire,” a prac­tice car­ried on up to the times of Moses. And there still per­sists the idea of pass­ing through fire af­ter death. The fire myth was a great bond in early times and still per­sists in the sym­bol­ism of the Parsees.

• value distortion in worship of wealth-power

70:2.132. The wor­ship of wealth-power, value dis­tor­tion.

• Adam refused to accept

74:4.4It was near the dawn of their sev­enth day on earth that Adam and Eve heard the startling news of the pro­posal of these well-mean­ing but mis­guided mor­tals; and then, even while the pas­sen­ger birds were swiftly wing­ing to bring them to the tem­ple, the mid­way­ers, be­ing able to do such things, trans­ported Adam and Eve to the Fa­ther’s tem­ple. It was early on the morn­ing of this sev­enth day and from the mount of their so re­cent re­cep­tion that Adam held forth in ex­pla­na­tion of the or­ders of di­vine son­ship and made clear to these earth minds that only the Fa­ther and those whom he des­ig­nates may be wor­shiped. Adam made it plain that he would ac­cept any honor and re­ceive all re­spect, but wor­ship never!

• defined as › worship of Him who made us and keeps us living
• practice of worship › worship should be directed to Father only

74:4.5It was a mo­men­tous day, and just be­fore noon, about the time of the ar­rival of the se­raphic mes­sen­ger bear­ing the Je­ru­sem ac­knowl­edg­ment of the in­stal­la­tion of the world’s rulers, Adam and Eve, mov­ing apart from the throng, pointed to the Fa­ther’s tem­ple and said: “Go you now to the ma­te­rial em­blem of the Fa­ther’s in­vis­i­ble pres­ence and bow down in wor­ship of him who made us all and who keeps us liv­ing. And let this act be the sin­cere pledge that you never will again be tempted to wor­ship any­one but God.” They all did as Adam di­rected. The Ma­te­rial Son and Daugh­ter stood alone on the mount with bowed heads while the peo­ple pros­trated them­selves about the tem­ple.

• primitives worshiped › everything imaginable

85:0.4At one time or an­other mor­tal man has wor­shiped ev­ery­thing on the face of the earth, in­clud­ing him­self. He has also wor­shiped about ev­ery­thing imag­in­able in the sky and be­neath the sur­face of the earth. Prim­i­tive man feared all man­i­fes­ta­tions of power; he wor­shiped ev­ery nat­u­ral phe­nom­e­non he could not com­pre­hend. The ob­ser­va­tion of pow­er­ful nat­u­ral forces, such as storms, floods, earth­quakes, land­slides, vol­ca­noes, fire, heat, and cold, greatly im­pressed the ex­pand­ing mind of man. The in­ex­pli­ca­ble things of life are still termed “acts of God” and “mys­te­ri­ous dis­pen­sa­tions of Prov­i­dence.”

85:1.1The first ob­ject to be wor­shiped by evolv­ing man was a stone. To­day the Ka­teri peo­ple of south­ern In­dia still wor­ship a stone, as do nu­mer­ous tribes in north­ern In­dia. Ja­cob slept on a stone be­cause he ven­er­ated it; he even anointed it. Rachel con­cealed a num­ber of sa­cred stones in her tent.

85:1.2Stones first im­pressed early man as be­ing out of the or­di­nary be­cause of the man­ner in which they would so sud­denly ap­pear on the sur­face of a cul­ti­vated field or pas­ture. Men failed to take into ac­count ei­ther ero­sion or the re­sults of the over­turn­ing of soil. Stones also greatly im­pressed early peo­ples be­cause of their fre­quent re­sem­blance to an­i­mals. The at­ten­tion of civ­i­lized man is ar­rested by nu­mer­ous stone for­ma­tions in the moun­tains which so much re­sem­ble the faces of an­i­mals and even men. But the most pro­found in­flu­ence was ex­erted by me­te­oric stones which prim­i­tive hu­mans be­held hurtling through the at­mo­sphere in flam­ing grandeur. The shoot­ing star was awe­some to early man, and he eas­ily be­lieved that such blaz­ing streaks marked the pas­sage of a spirit on its way to earth. No won­der men were led to wor­ship such phe­nom­ena, es­pe­cially when they sub­se­quently dis­cov­ered the me­te­ors. And this led to greater rev­er­ence for all other stones. In Ben­gal many wor­ship a me­teor which fell to earth in A.D. 1880.

85:1.3All an­cient clans and tribes had their sa­cred stones, and most mod­ern peo­ples man­i­fest a de­gree of ven­er­a­tion for cer­tain types of stones—their jew­els. A group of five stones was rev­er­enced in In­dia; in Greece it was a clus­ter of thirty; among the red men it was usu­ally a cir­cle of stones. The Ro­mans al­ways threw a stone into the air when in­vok­ing Jupiter. In In­dia even to this day a stone can be used as a wit­ness. In some re­gions a stone may be em­ployed as a tal­is­man of the law, and by its pres­tige an of­fender can be haled into court. But sim­ple mor­tals do not al­ways iden­tify De­ity with an ob­ject of rev­er­ent cer­e­mony. Such fe­tishes are many times mere sym­bols of the real ob­ject of wor­ship.

85:1.4The an­cients had a pe­cu­liar re­gard for holes in stones. Such porous rocks were sup­posed to be un­usu­ally ef­fi­ca­cious in cur­ing dis­eases. Ears were not per­fo­rated to carry stones, but the stones were put in to keep the ear holes open. Even in mod­ern times su­per­sti­tious per­sons make holes in coins. In Africa the na­tives make much ado over their fe­tish stones. In fact, among all back­ward tribes and peo­ples stones are still held in su­per­sti­tious ven­er­a­tion. Stone wor­ship is even now wide­spread over the world. The tomb­stone is a sur­viv­ing sym­bol of im­ages and idols which were carved in stone in con­nec­tion with be­liefs in ghosts and the spir­its of de­parted fel­low be­ings.

85:1.5Hill wor­ship fol­lowed stone wor­ship, and the first hills to be ven­er­ated were large stone for­ma­tions. It pres­ently be­came the cus­tom to be­lieve that the gods in­hab­ited the moun­tains, so that high el­e­va­tions of land were wor­shiped for this ad­di­tional rea­son. As time passed, cer­tain moun­tains were as­so­ci­ated with cer­tain gods and there­fore be­came holy. The ig­no­rant and su­per­sti­tious abo­rig­ines be­lieved that caves led to the un­der­world, with its evil spir­its and demons, in con­trast with the moun­tains, which were iden­ti­fied with the later evolv­ing con­cepts of good spir­its and de­i­ties.

85:2.1Plants were first feared and then wor­shiped be­cause of the in­tox­i­cat­ing liq­uors which were de­rived there­from. Prim­i­tive man be­lieved that in­tox­i­ca­tion ren­dered one di­vine. There was sup­posed to be some­thing un­usual and sa­cred about such an ex­pe­ri­ence. Even in mod­ern times al­co­hol is known as “spir­its.”

85:2.2Early man looked upon sprout­ing grain with dread and su­per­sti­tious awe. The Apos­tle Paul was not the first to draw pro­found spir­i­tual lessons from, and pred­i­cate re­li­gious be­liefs on, the sprout­ing grain.

85:2.3The cults of tree wor­ship are among the old­est re­li­gious groups. All early mar­riages were held un­der the trees, and when women de­sired chil­dren, they would some­times be found out in the for­est af­fec­tion­ately em­brac­ing a sturdy oak. Many plants and trees were ven­er­ated be­cause of their real or fan­cied medic­i­nal pow­ers. The sav­age be­lieved that all chem­i­cal ef­fects were due to the di­rect ac­tiv­ity of super­nat­u­ral forces.

85:2.4Ideas about tree spir­its var­ied greatly among dif­fer­ent tribes and races. Some trees were in­dwelt by kindly spir­its; oth­ers har­bored the de­cep­tive and cruel. The Finns be­lieved that most trees were oc­cu­pied by kind spir­its. The Swiss long mis­trusted the trees, be­liev­ing they con­tained tricky spir­its. The in­hab­i­tants of In­dia and east­ern Rus­sia re­gard the tree spir­its as be­ing cruel. The Patag­o­ni­ans still wor­ship trees, as did the early Semites. Long af­ter the He­brews ceased tree wor­ship, they con­tin­ued to ven­er­ate their var­i­ous de­i­ties in the groves. Ex­cept in China, there once ex­isted a uni­ver­sal cult of the tree of life.

85:2.5The be­lief that wa­ter or pre­cious met­als be­neath the earth’s sur­face can be de­tected by a wooden di­vin­ing rod is a relic of the an­cient tree cults. The May­pole, the Christ­mas tree, and the su­per­sti­tious prac­tice of rap­ping on wood per­pet­u­ate cer­tain of the an­cient cus­toms of tree wor­ship and the later-day tree cults.

85:2.6Many of these ear­li­est forms of na­ture ven­er­a­tion be­came blended with the later evolv­ing tech­niques of wor­ship, but the ear­li­est mind-ad­ju­tant-ac­ti­vated types of wor­ship were func­tion­ing long be­fore the newly awak­en­ing re­li­gious na­ture of man­kind be­came fully re­spon­sive to the stim­u­lus of spir­i­tual in­flu­ences.

85:3.1Prim­i­tive man had a pe­cu­liar and fel­low feel­ing for the higher an­i­mals. His an­ces­tors had lived with them and even mated with them. In south­ern Asia it was early be­lieved that the souls of men came back to earth in an­i­mal form. This be­lief was a sur­vival of the still ear­lier prac­tice of wor­ship­ing an­i­mals.

85:3.2Early men revered the an­i­mals for their power and their cun­ning. They thought the keen scent and the farsee­ing eyes of cer­tain crea­tures be­to­kened spirit guid­ance. The an­i­mals have all been wor­shiped by one race or an­other at one time or an­other. Among such ob­jects of wor­ship were crea­tures that were re­garded as half hu­man and half an­i­mal, such as cen­taurs and mer­maids.

85:3.3The He­brews wor­shiped ser­pents down to the days of King Hezekiah, and the Hin­dus still main­tain friendly re­la­tions with their house snakes. The Chi­nese wor­ship of the dragon is a sur­vival of the snake cults. The wis­dom of the ser­pent was a sym­bol of Greek med­i­cine and is still em­ployed as an em­blem by mod­ern physi­cians. The art of snake charm­ing has been handed down from the days of the fe­male shamans of the snake love cult, who, as the re­sult of daily snake bites, be­came im­mune, in fact, be­came gen­uine venom ad­dicts and could not get along with­out this poi­son.

85:3.4The wor­ship of in­sects and other an­i­mals was pro­moted by a later mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the golden rule—do­ing to oth­ers (ev­ery form of life) as you would be done by. The an­cients once be­lieved that all winds were pro­duced by the wings of birds and there­fore both feared and wor­shiped all winged crea­tures. The early Nordics thought that eclipses were caused by a wolf that de­voured a por­tion of the sun or moon. The Hin­dus of­ten show Vishnu with a horse’s head. Many times an an­i­mal sym­bol stands for a for­got­ten god or a van­ished cult. Early in evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion the lamb be­came the typ­i­cal sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mal and the dove the sym­bol of peace and love.

85:3.5In re­li­gion, sym­bol­ism may be ei­ther good or bad just to the ex­tent that the sym­bol does or does not dis­place the orig­i­nal wor­ship­ful idea. And sym­bol­ism must not be con­fused with di­rect idol­a­try wherein the ma­te­rial ob­ject is di­rectly and ac­tu­ally wor­shiped.

85:4.1Man­kind has wor­shiped earth, air, wa­ter, and fire. The prim­i­tive races ven­er­ated springs and wor­shiped rivers. Even now in Mon­go­lia there flour­ishes an in­flu­en­tial river cult. Bap­tism be­came a re­li­gious cer­e­mo­nial in Baby­lon, and the Greeks prac­ticed the an­nual rit­ual bath. It was easy for the an­cients to imag­ine that the spir­its dwelt in the bub­bling springs, gush­ing foun­tains, flow­ing rivers, and rag­ing tor­rents. Mov­ing wa­ters vividly im­pressed these sim­ple minds with be­liefs of spirit an­i­ma­tion and super­nat­u­ral power. Some­times a drown­ing man would be re­fused suc­cor for fear of of­fend­ing some river god.

85:4.2Many things and nu­mer­ous events have func­tioned as re­li­gious stim­uli to dif­fer­ent peo­ples in dif­fer­ent ages. A rain­bow is yet wor­shiped by many of the hill tribes of In­dia. In both In­dia and Africa the rain­bow is thought to be a gi­gan­tic ce­les­tial snake; He­brews and Chris­tians re­gard it as “the bow of prom­ise.” Like­wise, in­flu­ences re­garded as benef­i­cent in one part of the world may be looked upon as ma­lig­nant in other re­gions. The east wind is a god in South Amer­ica, for it brings rain; in In­dia it is a devil be­cause it brings dust and causes drought. The an­cient Bed­ou­ins be­lieved that a na­ture spirit pro­duced the sand whirls, and even in the times of Moses be­lief in na­ture spir­its was strong enough to in­sure their per­pet­u­a­tion in He­brew the­ol­ogy as an­gels of fire, wa­ter, and air.

85:4.3Clouds, rain, and hail have all been feared and wor­shiped by nu­mer­ous prim­i­tive tribes and by many of the early na­ture cults. Wind­storms with thun­der and light­ning over­awed early man. He was so im­pressed with these el­e­men­tal dis­tur­bances that thun­der was re­garded as the voice of an an­gry god. The wor­ship of fire and the fear of light­ning were linked to­gether and were wide­spread among many early groups.

85:4.4Fire was mixed up with magic in the minds of prim­i­tive fear-rid­den mor­tals. A devo­tee of magic will vividly re­mem­ber one pos­i­tive chance re­sult in the prac­tice of his magic for­mu­las, while he non­cha­lantly for­gets a score of neg­a­tive re­sults, out-and-out fail­ures. Fire rev­er­ence reached its height in Per­sia, where it long per­sisted. Some tribes wor­shiped fire as a de­ity it­self; oth­ers revered it as the flam­ing sym­bol of the pu­ri­fy­ing and purg­ing spirit of their ven­er­ated de­i­ties. Vestal vir­gins were charged with the duty of watch­ing sa­cred fires, and in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury can­dles still burn as a part of the rit­ual of many re­li­gious ser­vices.

85:5.1The wor­ship of rocks, hills, trees, and an­i­mals nat­u­rally de­vel­oped up through fear­ful ven­er­a­tion of the el­e­ments to the de­ifi­ca­tion of the sun, moon, and stars. In In­dia and else­where the stars were re­garded as the glo­ri­fied souls of great men who had de­parted from the life in the flesh. The Chaldean star cultists con­sid­ered them­selves to be the chil­dren of the sky fa­ther and the earth mother.

85:5.2Moon wor­ship pre­ceded sun wor­ship. Ven­er­a­tion of the moon was at its height dur­ing the hunt­ing era, while sun wor­ship be­came the chief re­li­gious cer­e­mony of the sub­se­quent ag­ri­cul­tural ages. So­lar wor­ship first took ex­ten­sive root in In­dia, and there it per­sisted the longest. In Per­sia sun ven­er­a­tion gave rise to the later Mith­raic cult. Among many peo­ples the sun was re­garded as the an­ces­tor of their kings. The Chaldeans put the sun in the cen­ter of “the seven cir­cles of the uni­verse.” Later civ­i­liza­tions hon­ored the sun by giv­ing its name to the first day of the week.

85:5.3The sun god was sup­posed to be the mys­tic fa­ther of the vir­gin-born sons of des­tiny who ever and anon were thought to be be­stowed as sav­iors upon fa­vored races. These super­nat­u­ral in­fants were al­ways put adrift upon some sa­cred river to be res­cued in an ex­traor­di­nary man­ner, af­ter which they would grow up to be­come mirac­u­lous per­son­al­i­ties and the de­liv­er­ers of their peo­ples.

85:6.1Hav­ing wor­shiped ev­ery­thing else on the face of the earth and in the heav­ens above, man has not hes­i­tated to honor him­self with such ado­ra­tion. The sim­ple-minded sav­age makes no clear dis­tinc­tion be­tween beasts, men, and gods.

85:6.2Early man re­garded all un­usual per­sons as super­hu­man, and he so feared such be­ings as to hold them in rev­er­en­tial awe; to some de­gree he lit­er­ally wor­shiped them. Even hav­ing twins was re­garded as be­ing ei­ther very lucky or very un­lucky. Lu­natics, epilep­tics, and the fee­ble-minded were of­ten wor­shiped by their nor­mal-minded fel­lows, who be­lieved that such ab­nor­mal be­ings were in­dwelt by the gods. Priests, kings, and proph­ets were wor­shiped; the holy men of old were looked upon as in­spired by the de­i­ties.

85:6.3Tribal chiefs died and were de­i­fied. Later, dis­tin­guished souls passed on and were sainted. Un­aided evo­lu­tion never orig­i­nated gods higher than the glo­ri­fied, ex­alted, and evolved spir­its of de­ceased hu­mans. In early evo­lu­tion re­li­gion cre­ates its own gods. In the course of rev­e­la­tion the Gods for­mu­late re­li­gion. Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion cre­ates its gods in the im­age and like­ness of mor­tal man; rev­e­la­tory re­li­gion seeks to evolve and trans­form mor­tal man into the im­age and like­ness of God.

85:6.4The ghost gods, who are of sup­posed hu­man ori­gin, should be dis­tin­guished from the na­ture gods, for na­ture wor­ship did evolve a pan­theon—na­ture spir­its el­e­vated to the po­si­tion of gods. The na­ture cults con­tin­ued to de­velop along with the later ap­pear­ing ghost cults, and each ex­erted an in­flu­ence upon the other. Many re­li­gious sys­tems em­braced a dual con­cept of de­ity, na­ture gods and ghost gods; in some the­olo­gies these con­cepts are con­fus­ingly in­ter­twined, as is il­lus­trated by Thor, a ghost hero who was also mas­ter of the light­ning.

85:6.5But the wor­ship of man by man reached its height when tem­po­ral rulers com­manded such ven­er­a­tion from their sub­jects and, in sub­stan­ti­a­tion of such de­mands, claimed to have de­scended from de­ity.

• primitives worshiped › what they feared

85:7.2You must re­mem­ber that feel­ing, not think­ing, was the guid­ing and con­trol­ling in­flu­ence in all evo­lu­tion­ary de­vel­op­ment. To the prim­i­tive mind there is lit­tle dif­fer­ence be­tween fear­ing, shun­ning, hon­or­ing, and wor­ship­ing.

• urge to w. not dependent on revelation

86:0.1The evo­lu­tion of re­li­gion from the pre­ced­ing and prim­i­tive wor­ship urge is not de­pen­dent on rev­e­la­tion. The nor­mal func­tion­ing of the hu­man mind un­der the di­rec­tive in­flu­ence of the sixth and sev­enth mind-ad­ju­tants of uni­ver­sal spirit be­stowal is wholly suf­fi­cient to in­sure such de­vel­op­ment.

• practice of worship › for its own sake; worship asks and expects nothing

91:4.3In all your pray­ing be fair; do not ex­pect God to show par­tial­ity, to love you more than his other chil­dren, your friends, neigh­bors, even en­e­mies. But the prayer of the nat­u­ral or evolved re­li­gions is not at first eth­i­cal, as it is in the later re­vealed re­li­gions. All pray­ing, whether in­di­vid­ual or com­mu­nal, may be ei­ther ego­is­tic or al­tru­is­tic. That is, the prayer may be cen­tered upon the self or upon oth­ers. When the prayer seeks noth­ing for the one who prays nor any­thing for his fel­lows, then such at­ti­tudes of the soul tend to the lev­els of true wor­ship. Ego­is­tic prayers in­volve con­fes­sions and pe­ti­tions and of­ten con­sist in re­quests for ma­te­rial fa­vors. Prayer is some­what more eth­i­cal when it deals with for­give­ness and seeks wis­dom for en­hanced self-con­trol.

• practice of worship › group worship › group prayer prevents danger associated with overmuch private prayer

91:7.13But prayer has no real as­so­ci­a­tion with these ex­cep­tional re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ences. When prayer be­comes over­much aes­thetic, when it con­sists al­most ex­clu­sively in beau­ti­ful and bliss­ful con­tem­pla­tion of par­a­di­si­a­cal di­vin­ity, it loses much of its so­cial­iz­ing in­flu­ence and tends to­ward mys­ti­cism and the iso­la­tion of its devo­tees. There is a cer­tain dan­ger as­so­ci­ated with over­much pri­vate pray­ing which is cor­rected and pre­vented by group pray­ing, com­mu­nity de­vo­tions.

• given in recognition of loving ministry of God

92:4.84. Je­sus of Naz­a­reth. Christ Mi­chael pre­sented for the fourth time to Uran­tia the con­cept of God as the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, and this teach­ing has gen­er­ally per­sisted ever since. The essence of his teach­ing was love and ser­vice, the lov­ing wor­ship which a crea­ture son vol­un­tar­ily gives in rec­og­ni­tion of, and re­sponse to, the lov­ing min­istry of God his Fa­ther; the free­will ser­vice which such crea­ture sons be­stow upon their breth­ren in the joy­ous re­al­iza­tion that in this ser­vice they are like­wise serv­ing God the Fa­ther.

• primitives worshiped › political rulers in Roman Empire

98:3.7One of the priests of the state re­li­gion told Au­gus­tus of the ear­lier at­tempts of the Salem teach­ers to spread the doc­trine of one God, a fi­nal De­ity pre­sid­ing over all super­nat­u­ral be­ings; and this idea took such a firm hold on the em­peror that he built many tem­ples, stocked them well with beau­ti­ful im­ages, re­or­ga­nized the state priest­hood, re-es­tab­lished the state re­li­gion, ap­pointed him­self act­ing high priest of all, and as em­peror did not hes­i­tate to pro­claim him­self the su­preme god.

98:3.8This new re­li­gion of Au­gus­tus wor­ship flour­ished and was ob­served through­out the em­pire dur­ing his life­time ex­cept in Pales­tine, the home of the Jews. And this era of the hu­man gods con­tin­ued un­til the of­fi­cial Ro­man cult had a ros­ter of more than two-score self-el­e­vated hu­man de­i­ties, all claim­ing mirac­u­lous births and other super­hu­man at­tri­butes.

• practice of worship › group worship

99:6.2There is a real pur­pose in the so­cial­iza­tion of re­li­gion. It is the pur­pose of group re­li­gious ac­tiv­i­ties to dra­ma­tize the loy­al­ties of re­li­gion; to mag­nify the lures of truth, beauty, and good­ness; to fos­ter the at­trac­tions of su­preme val­ues; to en­hance the ser­vice of un­selfish fel­low­ship; to glo­rify the po­ten­tials of fam­ily life; to pro­mote re­li­gious ed­u­ca­tion; to pro­vide wise coun­sel and spir­i­tual guid­ance; and to en­cour­age group wor­ship. And all live re­li­gions en­cour­age hu­man friend­ship, con­serve moral­ity, pro­mote neigh­bor­hood wel­fare, and fa­cil­i­tate the spread of the es­sen­tial gospel of their re­spec­tive mes­sages of eter­nal sal­va­tion.

• practice of worship › group worship › healthful spiritual meditation found in prayer of thanksgiving

100:5.10The more health­ful at­ti­tude of spir­i­tual med­i­ta­tion is to be found in re­flec­tive wor­ship and in the prayer of thanks­giv­ing. The di­rect com­mu­nion with one’s Thought Ad­juster, such as oc­curred in the later years of Je­sus’ life in the flesh, should not be con­fused with these so-called mys­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ences. The fac­tors which con­tribute to the ini­ti­a­tion of mys­tic com­mu­nion are in­dica­tive of the dan­ger of such psy­chic states. The mys­tic sta­tus is fa­vored by such things as: phys­i­cal fa­tigue, fast­ing, psy­chic dis­so­ci­a­tion, pro­found aes­thetic ex­pe­ri­ences, vivid sex im­pulses, fear, anx­i­ety, rage, and wild danc­ing. Much of the ma­te­rial aris­ing as a re­sult of such pre­lim­i­nary prepa­ra­tion has its ori­gin in the sub­con­scious mind.

• Jesus respectful of others’ faulty

100:7.16The Mas­ter was a pat­tern of rev­er­ence. The prayer of even his youth be­gan, “Our Fa­ther who is in heaven, hal­lowed be your name.” He was even re­spect­ful of the faulty wor­ship of his fel­lows. But this did not de­ter him from mak­ing at­tacks on re­li­gious tra­di­tions or as­sault­ing er­rors of hu­man be­lief. He was rev­er­en­tial of true ho­li­ness, and yet he could justly ap­peal to his fel­lows, say­ing, “Who among you con­victs me of sin?”

• defined as › more essential than prayer; deepens reflective powers

102:4.5Prayer is in­deed a part of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, but it has been wrongly em­pha­sized by mod­ern re­li­gions, much to the ne­glect of the more es­sen­tial com­mu­nion of wor­ship. The re­flec­tive pow­ers of the mind are deep­ened and broad­ened by wor­ship. Prayer may en­rich the life, but wor­ship il­lu­mi­nates des­tiny.

• defined as › practice of presence of God
• practice of worship › group worship › atmosphere of communion is beginning of

103:4.1The char­ac­ter­is­tic dif­fer­ence be­tween a so­cial oc­ca­sion and a re­li­gious gath­er­ing is that in con­trast with the sec­u­lar the re­li­gious is per­vaded by the at­mo­sphere of com­mu­nion. In this way hu­man as­so­ci­a­tion gen­er­ates a feel­ing of fel­low­ship with the di­vine, and this is the be­gin­ning of group wor­ship. Par­tak­ing of a com­mon meal was the ear­li­est type of so­cial com­mu­nion, and so did early re­li­gions pro­vide that some por­tion of the cer­e­mo­nial sac­ri­fice should be eaten by the wor­shipers. Even in Chris­tian­ity the Lord’s Sup­per re­tains this mode of com­mu­nion. The at­mo­sphere of the com­mu­nion pro­vides a re­fresh­ing and com­fort­ing pe­riod of truce in the con­flict of the self-seek­ing ego with the al­tru­is­tic urge of the in­dwelling spirit Mon­i­tor. And this is the pre­lude to true wor­ship—the prac­tice of the pres­ence of God which even­tu­ates in the emer­gence of the broth­er­hood of man.

• wisdom is lost in enlightened and reflective w.

112:2.11As mind pur­sues re­al­ity to its ul­ti­mate anal­y­sis, mat­ter van­ishes to the ma­te­rial senses but may still re­main real to mind. When spir­i­tual in­sight pur­sues that re­al­ity which re­mains af­ter the dis­ap­pear­ance of mat­ter and pur­sues it to an ul­ti­mate anal­y­sis, it van­ishes to mind, but the in­sight of spirit can still per­ceive cos­mic re­al­i­ties and su­preme val­ues of a spir­i­tual na­ture. Ac­cord­ingly does sci­ence give way to phi­los­o­phy, while phi­los­o­phy must sur­ren­der to the con­clu­sions in­her­ent in gen­uine spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. Think­ing sur­ren­ders to wis­dom, and wis­dom is lost in en­light­ened and re­flec­tive wor­ship.

112:2.12In sci­ence the hu­man self ob­serves the ma­te­rial world; phi­los­o­phy is the ob­ser­va­tion of this ob­ser­va­tion of the ma­te­rial world; re­li­gion, true spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, is the ex­pe­ri­en­tial re­al­iza­tion of the cos­mic re­al­ity of the ob­ser­va­tion of the ob­ser­va­tion of all this rel­a­tive syn­the­sis of the en­ergy ma­te­ri­als of time and space. To build a phi­los­o­phy of the uni­verse on an ex­clu­sive ma­te­ri­al­ism is to ig­nore the fact that all things ma­te­rial are ini­tially con­ceived as real in the ex­pe­ri­ence of hu­man con­scious­ness. The ob­server can­not be the thing ob­served; eval­u­a­tion de­mands some de­gree of tran­scen­dence of the thing which is eval­u­ated.

112:2.13In time, think­ing leads to wis­dom and wis­dom leads to wor­ship; in eter­nity, wor­ship leads to wis­dom, and wis­dom even­tu­ates in the fi­nal­ity of thought.

• practice of worship › worship should be directed to Father only

131:1.3“Even if the earth should pass away, the re­splen­dent face of the Su­preme would abide in majesty and glory. The Most High is the first and the last, the be­gin­ning and the end of ev­ery­thing. There is but this one God, and his name is Truth. God is self-ex­is­tent, and he is de­void of all anger and en­mity; he is im­mor­tal and in­fi­nite. Our God is om­nipo­tent and boun­teous. While he has many man­i­fes­ta­tions, we wor­ship only God him­self. God knows all—our se­crets and our procla­ma­tions; he also knows what each of us de­serves. His might is equal to all things.

• practice of worship › shuns evil and forbids sin

131:1.8“At all times call upon his name, and as you be­lieve in his name, so shall your prayer be heard. What a great honor it is to wor­ship the Most High! All the worlds and the uni­verses wor­ship the Most High. And with all your prayers give thanks—as­cend to wor­ship. Prayer­ful wor­ship shuns evil and for­bids sin. At all times let us praise the name of the Most High. The man who takes shel­ter in the Most High con­ceals his de­fects from the uni­verse. When you stand be­fore God with a clean heart, you be­come fear­less of all cre­ation. The Most High is like a lov­ing fa­ther and mother; he re­ally loves us, his chil­dren on earth. Our God will for­give us and guide our foot­steps into the ways of sal­va­tion. He will take us by the hand and lead us to him­self. God saves those who trust him; he does not com­pel man to serve his name.

• defined as › making inner self intent upon God

131:4.5“We have learned to win faith by the yearn­ing of our hearts. We have at­tained wis­dom by the re­straint of our senses, and by wis­dom we have ex­pe­ri­enced peace in the Su­preme. He who is full of faith wor­ships truly when his in­ner self is in­tent upon God. Our God wears the heav­ens as a man­tle; he also in­hab­its the other six wide-spread­ing uni­verses. He is su­preme over all and in all. We crave for­give­ness from the Lord for all of our tres­passes against our fel­lows; and we would re­lease our friend from the wrong he has done us. Our spirit loathes all evil; there­fore, O Lord, free us from all taint of sin. We pray to God as a com­forter, pro­tec­tor, and sav­ior—one who loves us.

• Father never fails to accept sincere

142:3.31. Yah­weh—the god of the Sinai clans. This was the prim­i­tive con­cept of De­ity which Moses ex­alted to the higher level of the Lord God of Is­rael. The Fa­ther in heaven never fails to ac­cept the sin­cere wor­ship of his chil­dren on earth, no mat­ter how crude their con­cept of De­ity or by what name they sym­bol­ize his di­vine na­ture.

• Father never fails to accept sincere

142:3.86. The Fa­ther in heaven. And now do we know God as our Fa­ther in heaven. Our teach­ing pro­vides a re­li­gion wherein the be­liever is a son of God. That is the good news of the gospel of the king­dom of heaven. Co­ex­is­tent with the Fa­ther are the Son and the Spirit, and the rev­e­la­tion of the na­ture and min­istry of these Par­a­dise De­i­ties will con­tinue to en­large and brighten through­out the end­less ages of the eter­nal spir­i­tual pro­gres­sion of the as­cend­ing sons of God. At all times and dur­ing all ages the true wor­ship of any hu­man be­ing—as con­cerns in­di­vid­ual spir­i­tual prog­ress—is rec­og­nized by the in­dwelling spirit as homage ren­dered to the Fa­ther in heaven.

• practice of worship › worship in spirit and in truth

143:5.6Je­sus per­ceived the at­tempt of the woman’s soul to avoid di­rect and search­ing con­tact with its Maker, but he also saw that there was pres­ent in her soul a de­sire to know the bet­ter way of life. Af­ter all, there was in Nalda’s heart a true thirst for the liv­ing wa­ter; there­fore he dealt pa­tiently with her, say­ing: “Woman, let me say to you that the day is soon com­ing when nei­ther on this moun­tain nor in Je­ru­sa­lem will you wor­ship the Fa­ther. But now you wor­ship that which you know not, a mix­ture of the re­li­gion of many pa­gan gods and gen­tile philoso­phies. The Jews at least know whom they wor­ship; they have re­moved all con­fu­sion by con­cen­trat­ing their wor­ship upon one God, Yah­weh. But you should be­lieve me when I say that the hour will soon come—even now is—when all sin­cere wor­shipers will wor­ship the Fa­ther in spirit and in truth, for it is just such wor­shipers the Fa­ther seeks. God is spirit, and they who wor­ship him must wor­ship him in spirit and in truth. Your sal­va­tion comes not from know­ing how oth­ers should wor­ship or where but by re­ceiv­ing into your own heart this liv­ing wa­ter which I am of­fer­ing you even now.”

• alternate with service

143:7.3Wor­ship—con­tem­pla­tion of the spir­i­tual—must al­ter­nate with ser­vice, con­tact with ma­te­rial re­al­ity. Work should al­ter­nate with play; re­li­gion should be bal­anced by hu­mor. Pro­found phi­los­o­phy should be re­lieved by rhyth­mic po­etry. The strain of liv­ing—the time ten­sion of per­son­al­ity—should be re­laxed by the rest­ful­ness of wor­ship. The feel­ings of in­se­cu­rity aris­ing from the fear of per­son­al­ity iso­la­tion in the uni­verse should be an­ti­doted by the faith con­tem­pla­tion of the Fa­ther and by the at­tempted re­al­iza­tion of the Su­preme.

• defined as › divinely creative; self-forgetting

143:7.5Wor­ship is in­tended to an­tic­i­pate the bet­ter life ahead and then to re­flect these new spir­i­tual sig­nif­i­cances back onto the life which now is. Prayer is spir­i­tu­ally sus­tain­ing, but wor­ship is di­vinely cre­ative.

• defined as › divinely creative; self-forgetting

143:7.7Prayer is self-re­mind­ing—sub­lime think­ing; wor­ship is self-for­get­ting—super­think­ing. Wor­ship is ef­fort­less at­ten­tion, true and ideal soul rest, a form of rest­ful spir­i­tual ex­er­tion.

• defined as › part identifying with Whole

143:7.8Wor­ship is the act of a part iden­ti­fy­ing it­self with the Whole; the fi­nite with the In­fi­nite; the son with the Fa­ther; time in the act of strik­ing step with eter­nity. Wor­ship is the act of the son’s per­sonal com­mu­nion with the di­vine Fa­ther, the as­sump­tion of re­fresh­ing, cre­ative, fra­ter­nal, and ro­man­tic at­ti­tudes by the hu­man soul-spirit.

• defined as › tuning in to universe broadcasts

144:4.8As prayer may be likened to recharg­ing the spir­i­tual bat­ter­ies of the soul, so wor­ship may be com­pared to the act of tun­ing in the soul to catch the uni­verse broad­casts of the in­fi­nite spirit of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

• good to give thanks to the Lord

146:2.1514. Je­sus warned his fol­low­ers against think­ing that their prayers would be ren­dered more ef­fi­ca­cious by or­nate rep­e­ti­tions, elo­quent phrase­ol­ogy, fast­ing, pen­ance, or sac­ri­fices. But he did ex­hort his be­liev­ers to em­ploy prayer as a means of lead­ing up through thanks­giv­ing to true wor­ship. Je­sus de­plored that so lit­tle of the spirit of thanks­giv­ing was to be found in the prayers and wor­ship of his fol­low­ers. He quoted from the Scrip­tures on this oc­ca­sion, say­ing: “It is a good thing to give thanks to the Lord and to sing praises to the name of the Most High, to ac­knowl­edge his lov­ing-kind­ness ev­ery morn­ing and his faith­ful­ness ev­ery night, for God has made me glad through his work. In ev­ery­thing I will give thanks ac­cord­ing to the will of God.”

• defined as › communication with God to which mind assents, Adjuster conducts
• practice of worship › makes one like the being worshiped

146:2.1716. Je­sus taught his fol­low­ers that, when they had made their prayers to the Fa­ther, they should re­main for a time in silent re­cep­tiv­ity to af­ford the in­dwelling spirit the bet­ter op­por­tu­nity to speak to the lis­ten­ing soul. The spirit of the Fa­ther speaks best to man when the hu­man mind is in an at­ti­tude of true wor­ship. We wor­ship God by the aid of the Fa­ther’s in­dwelling spirit and by the il­lu­mi­na­tion of the hu­man mind through the min­istry of truth. Wor­ship, taught Je­sus, makes one in­creas­ingly like the be­ing who is wor­shiped. Wor­ship is a trans­form­ing ex­pe­ri­ence whereby the fi­nite grad­u­ally ap­proaches and ul­ti­mately at­tains the pres­ence of the In­fi­nite.

• defined as › communication with God to which mind assents, Adjuster conducts

146:3.6“While you can­not ob­serve the di­vine spirit at work in your minds, there is a prac­ti­cal method of dis­cov­er­ing the de­gree to which you have yielded the con­trol of your soul pow­ers to the teach­ing and guid­ance of this in­dwelling spirit of the heav­enly Fa­ther, and that is the de­gree of your love for your fel­low men. This spirit of the Fa­ther par­takes of the love of the Fa­ther, and as it dom­i­nates man, it un­fail­ingly leads in the di­rec­tions of di­vine wor­ship and lov­ing re­gard for one’s fel­lows. At first you be­lieve that you are sons of God be­cause my teach­ing has made you more con­scious of the in­ner lead­ings of our Fa­ther’s in­dwelling pres­ence; but pres­ently the Spirit of Truth shall be poured out upon all flesh, and it will live among men and teach all men, even as I now live among you and speak to you the words of truth. And this Spirit of Truth, speak­ing for the spir­i­tual en­dow­ments of your souls, will help you to know that you are the sons of God. It will un­fail­ingly bear wit­ness with the Fa­ther’s in­dwelling pres­ence, your spirit, then dwell­ing in all men as it now dwells in some, telling you that you are in re­al­ity the sons of God.

• defined as › son’s affectionate reciprocation of Father’s love

149:6.2“My chil­dren, I am not sur­prised that you ask such ques­tions. In the be­gin­ning it was only through fear that man could learn rev­er­ence, but I have come to re­veal the Fa­ther’s love so that you will be at­tracted to the wor­ship of the Eter­nal by the draw­ing of a son’s af­fec­tion­ate rec­og­ni­tion and re­cip­ro­ca­tion of the Fa­ther’s pro­found and per­fect love. I would de­liver you from the bond­age of driv­ing your­selves through slav­ish fear to the irk­some ser­vice of a jeal­ous and wrath­ful King-God. I would in­struct you in the Fa­ther-son re­la­tion­ship of God and man so that you may be joy­fully led into that sub­lime and su­per­nal free wor­ship of a lov­ing, just, and mer­ci­ful Fa­ther-God.

• defined as › son’s affectionate reciprocation of Father’s love

149:6.4“In­tel­li­gent chil­dren do not fear their fa­ther in or­der that they may re­ceive good gifts from his hand; but hav­ing al­ready re­ceived the abun­dance of good things be­stowed by the dic­tates of the fa­ther’s af­fec­tion for his sons and daugh­ters, these much loved chil­dren are led to love their fa­ther in re­spon­sive rec­og­ni­tion and ap­pre­ci­a­tion of such mu­nif­i­cent benef­i­cence. The good­ness of God leads to re­pen­tance; the benef­i­cence of God leads to ser­vice; the mercy of God leads to sal­va­tion; while the love of God leads to in­tel­li­gent and free­hearted wor­ship.

• practice of worship › first, because God is

149:6.5“Your fore­bears feared God be­cause he was mighty and mys­te­ri­ous. You shall adore him be­cause he is mag­nif­i­cent in love, plen­teous in mercy, and glo­ri­ous in truth. The power of God en­gen­ders fear in the heart of man, but the no­bil­ity and righ­teous­ness of his per­son­al­ity beget rev­er­ence, love, and will­ing wor­ship. A du­ti­ful and af­fec­tion­ate son does not fear or dread even a mighty and no­ble fa­ther. I have come into the world to put love in the place of fear, joy in the place of sor­row, con­fi­dence in the place of dread, lov­ing ser­vice and ap­pre­cia­tive wor­ship in the place of slav­ish bond­age and mean­ing­less cer­e­monies. But it is still true of those who sit in dark­ness that ‘the fear of the Lord is the be­gin­ning of wis­dom.’ But when the light has more fully come, the sons of God are led to praise the In­fi­nite for what he is rather than to fear him for what he does.

• practice of worship › brings relaxation, illumination, courage, self-understanding

160:1.12This wor­ship­ful prac­tice of your Mas­ter brings that re­lax­ation which re­news the mind; that il­lu­mi­na­tion which in­spires the soul; that cour­age which en­ables one bravely to face one’s prob­lems; that self-un­der­stand­ing which oblit­er­ates de­bil­i­tat­ing fear; and that con­scious­ness of union with di­vin­ity which equips man with the as­sur­ance that en­ables him to dare to be God­like. The re­lax­ation of wor­ship, or spir­i­tual com­mu­nion as prac­ticed by the Mas­ter, re­lieves ten­sion, re­moves con­flicts, and might­ily aug­ments the to­tal re­sources of the per­son­al­ity. And all this phi­los­o­phy, plus the gospel of the king­dom, con­sti­tutes the new re­li­gion as I un­der­stand it.

• defined as › interchange of mind of self for will of God

160:3.1The ef­fort to­ward ma­tu­rity ne­ces­si­tates work, and work re­quires en­ergy. Whence the power to ac­com­plish all this? The phys­i­cal things can be taken for granted, but the Mas­ter has well said, “Man can­not live by bread alone.” Granted the pos­ses­sion of a nor­mal body and rea­son­ably good health, we must next look for those lures which will act as a stim­u­lus to call forth man’s slum­ber­ing spir­i­tual forces. Je­sus has taught us that God lives in man; then how can we in­duce man to re­lease these soul-bound pow­ers of di­vin­ity and in­fin­ity? How shall we in­duce men to let go of God that he may spring forth to the re­fresh­ment of our own souls while in tran­sit out­ward and then to serve the pur­pose of en­light­en­ing, up­lift­ing, and bless­ing count­less other souls? How best can I awaken these la­tent pow­ers for good which lie dor­mant in your souls? One thing I am sure of: Emo­tional ex­cite­ment is not the ideal spir­i­tual stim­u­lus. Ex­cite­ment does not aug­ment en­ergy; it rather ex­hausts the pow­ers of both mind and body. Whence then comes the en­ergy to do these great things? Look to your Mas­ter. Even now he is out in the hills tak­ing in power while we are here giv­ing out en­ergy. The se­cret of all this prob­lem is wrapped up in spir­i­tual com­mu­nion, in wor­ship. From the hu­man stand­point it is a ques­tion of com­bined med­i­ta­tion and re­lax­ation. Med­i­ta­tion makes the con­tact of mind with spirit; re­lax­ation de­ter­mines the ca­pac­ity for spir­i­tual re­cep­tiv­ity. And this in­ter­change of strength for weak­ness, cour­age for fear, the will of God for the mind of self, con­sti­tutes wor­ship. At least, that is the way the philoso­pher views it.

• practice of worship › difficult and time-consuming at first

160:3.2When these ex­pe­ri­ences are fre­quently re­peated, they crys­tal­lize into habits, strength-giv­ing and wor­ship­ful habits, and such habits even­tu­ally for­mu­late them­selves into a spir­i­tual char­ac­ter, and such a char­ac­ter is fi­nally rec­og­nized by one’s fel­lows as a ma­ture per­son­al­ity. These prac­tices are dif­fi­cult and time-con­sum­ing at first, but when they be­come ha­bit­ual, they are at once rest­ful and time­sav­ing. The more com­plex so­ci­ety be­comes, and the more the lures of civ­i­liza­tion mul­ti­ply, the more ur­gent will be­come the ne­ces­sity for God-know­ing in­di­vid­u­als to form such pro­tec­tive ha­bit­ual prac­tices de­signed to con­serve and aug­ment their spir­i­tual en­er­gies.

• practice of worship › neglect not daily worship

163:4.101. Con­se­crated de­vo­tion. To pray al­ways for more la­bor­ers to be sent forth into the gospel har­vest. He ex­plained that, when one so prays, he will the more likely say, “Here am I; send me.” He ad­mon­ished them to ne­glect not their daily wor­ship.

• value of beauty in leading to w.

167:6.5It was also at Jeri­cho, in con­nec­tion with the dis­cus­sion of the early re­li­gious train­ing of chil­dren in habits of di­vine wor­ship, that Je­sus im­pressed upon his apos­tles the great value of beauty as an in­flu­ence lead­ing to the urge to wor­ship, es­pe­cially with chil­dren. The Mas­ter by pre­cept and ex­am­ple taught the value of wor­ship­ing the Cre­ator in the midst of the nat­u­ral sur­round­ings of cre­ation. He pre­ferred to com­mune with the heav­enly Fa­ther amidst the trees and among the lowly crea­tures of the nat­u­ral world. He re­joiced to con­tem­plate the Fa­ther through the in­spir­ing spec­ta­cle of the starry realms of the Cre­ator Sons.

167:6.6When it is not pos­si­ble to wor­ship God in the taber­na­cles of na­ture, men should do their best to pro­vide houses of beauty, sanc­tu­ar­ies of ap­peal­ing sim­plic­ity and artis­tic em­bel­lish­ment, so that the high­est of hu­man emo­tions may be aroused in as­so­ci­a­tion with the in­tel­lec­tual ap­proach to spir­i­tual com­mu­nion with God. Truth, beauty, and ho­li­ness are pow­er­ful and ef­fec­tive aids to true wor­ship. But spirit com­mu­nion is not pro­moted by mere mas­sive or­nate­ness and over­much em­bel­lish­ment with man’s elab­o­rate and os­ten­ta­tious art. Beauty is most re­li­gious when it is most sim­ple and na­ture­like. How un­for­tu­nate that lit­tle chil­dren should have their first in­tro­duc­tion to con­cepts of pub­lic wor­ship in cold and bar­ren rooms so de­void of the beauty ap­peal and so empty of all sug­ges­tion of good cheer and in­spir­ing ho­li­ness! The child should be in­tro­duced to wor­ship in na­ture’s out­doors and later ac­com­pany his par­ents to pub­lic houses of re­li­gious as­sem­bly which are at least as ma­te­ri­ally at­trac­tive and ar­tis­ti­cally beau­ti­ful as the home in which he is daily domi­ciled.

• practice of worship › worship in spirit and in truth

193:1.2“Peace be upon you. You re­joice to know that I am the res­ur­rec­tion and the life, but this will avail you noth­ing un­less you are first born of the eter­nal spirit, thereby com­ing to pos­sess, by faith, the gift of eter­nal life. If you are the faith sons of my Fa­ther, you shall never die; you shall not per­ish. The gospel of the king­dom has taught you that all men are the sons of God. And this good news con­cern­ing the love of the heav­enly Fa­ther for his chil­dren on earth must be car­ried to all the world. The time has come when you wor­ship God nei­ther on Ger­izim nor at Je­ru­sa­lem, but where you are, as you are, in spirit and in truth. It is your faith that saves your souls. Sal­va­tion is the gift of God to all who be­lieve they are his sons. But be not de­ceived; while sal­va­tion is the free gift of God and is be­stowed upon all who ac­cept it by faith, there fol­lows the ex­pe­ri­ence of bear­ing the fruits of this spirit life as it is lived in the flesh. The ac­cep­tance of the doc­trine of the fa­ther­hood of God im­plies that you also freely ac­cept the as­so­ci­ated truth of the broth­er­hood of man. And if man is your brother, he is even more than your neigh­bor, whom the Fa­ther re­quires you to love as your­self. Your brother, be­ing of your own fam­ily, you will not only love with a fam­ily af­fec­tion, but you will also serve as you would serve your­self. And you will thus love and serve your brother be­cause you, be­ing my breth­ren, have been thus loved and served by me. Go, then, into all the world telling this good news to all crea­tures of ev­ery race, tribe, and na­tion. My spirit shall go be­fore you, and I will be with you al­ways.”

• defense of outgrown systems of

195:10.8Ec­cle­si­as­ti­cism is at once and for­ever in­com­pat­i­ble with that liv­ing faith, grow­ing spirit, and first­hand ex­pe­ri­ence of the faith-com­rades of Je­sus in the broth­er­hood of man in the spir­i­tual as­so­ci­a­tion of the king­dom of heaven. The praise­wor­thy de­sire to pre­serve tra­di­tions of past achieve­ment of­ten leads to the de­fense of out­grown sys­tems of wor­ship. The well-meant de­sire to fos­ter an­cient thought sys­tems ef­fec­tu­ally pre­vents the spon­sor­ing of new and ad­e­quate means and meth­ods de­signed to sat­isfy the spir­i­tual long­ings of the ex­pand­ing and ad­vanc­ing minds of mod­ern men. Like­wise, the Chris­tian churches of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury stand as great, but wholly un­con­scious, ob­sta­cles to the im­me­di­ate ad­vance of the real gospel—the teach­ings of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth.

• cannot estimate quality of

196:3.18This pro­found ex­pe­ri­ence of the re­al­ity of the di­vine in­dwelling for­ever tran­scends the crude ma­te­ri­al­is­tic tech­nique of the phys­i­cal sci­ences. You can­not put spir­i­tual joy un­der a mi­cro­scope; you can­not weigh love in a bal­ance; you can­not mea­sure moral val­ues; nei­ther can you es­ti­mate the qual­ity of spir­i­tual wor­ship.

• defined as › personal communion with that which is divinely real; not futile monologue

196:3.22True re­li­gious wor­ship is not a fu­tile mono­logue of self-de­cep­tion. Wor­ship is a per­sonal com­mu­nion with that which is di­vinely real, with that which is the very source of re­al­ity. Man as­pires by wor­ship to be bet­ter and thereby even­tu­ally at­tains the best.