Believe me, my dear friends, this is no mere theory. It is to me a
matter of fact and experience. I cannot, I have long found, keep my
attention steady during a service, if I do not make the responses aloud;-
-if I do not join in with my voice, I find my thoughts wandering; and I
am bound to suppose that the case is the same with you. Do not,
therefore, think me impertinent or interfering, if I ask you all to take
your due share in worshipping God in this church with your voices, as
well as with your hearts. Let these services be more lively, more
earnest, more useful to us all than they have been, by making them more a
worship of the whole congregation, and not of the minister alone. I have
read of a great church in the East, in days long, long ago, in which the
responses of the vast congregation were so unanimous, so loud, that they
sounded (says the old writer) like a clap of thunder. That is too much
to expect in our little country church: but at least, I beg you, take
such an open part in the responses, that you shall all feel that you are
really worshipping together the same God and Christ, with the same heart
and mind; and that if a stranger shall come in, he may say in his heart:
Here are people who are in earnest, who know what they are about, and are
not ashamed of trying to do it; people who evidently mean what they say,
and therefore say what they mean.
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