For
pure worship (says St James), and undefiled before God and the Father, is
this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep
ourselves unspotted from the world.
Yes--every time we perform an act of kindness to any human being, aye,
even to a dumb animal; every time we conquer our own worldliness, love of
pleasure, ease, praise, ambition, money, for the sake of doing what our
conscience tells us to be our duty, we are indeed worshipping God the
Father in spirit and in truth, and offering him a sacrifice which He will
surely accept, for the sake of His beloved Son, by whose spirit all good
deeds and thoughts are inspired.
Think of these things, my friends, always, but, above all, think of them
as often as you come--as would to God all would come--to the altar of the
Lord, and the Holy Communion of His body and blood. For there, indeed,
you render to God that which is God's--namely, yourselves; there you
offer to God the true sacrifice, which is the sacrifice of yourselves--
the sacrifice of repentance, the sacrifice of thanksgiving, the sacrifice
of righteousness, or at least of hunger and thirst after righteousness;
and there you receive in return your share of God's sacrifice, the
sacrifice which you did not make for Him, but which He made for you, when
He spared not His only-begotten Son but freely gave Him for us.
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