They may have fancied often that their
deity dwelt in one special spot, and that they must go thither to find
him. They may have fancied that he or she dwelt in some particular
image, and that they must visit, and pray to that particular image, if
they wished their prayers to be heard. All this, however, have men done
in their foolishness; but beneath that foolishness there have been always
more rational ideas, sounder notions. They felt that it was God who had
made them into families, and therefore whole families met together to
worship in common Him of whom every family in heaven and earth is named.
That God had formed them into societies whether into tribes, as of old,
or into parishes, as here now; and therefore whole parishes came together
to worship God, whose laws they were bound to obey in their parochial
society. They felt that it was God who had made them into Nations (as
the psalm says which we repeat every Sunday morning), and not they
themselves; and therefore they conceived the grand idea of National
churches, in which the whole nation should, if possible, worship Sunday
after Sunday, at the same time, and in the same words, that God to whom
they owed their order, their freedom, their strength, their safety, their
National unity and life.
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