God Worshipped in His Works

"The heavens declare the glory of God: and the firmament showeth his handy work. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard." — Ps. 19. 1, 2, 3.

Men use a different speech in different climes,
But Nature hath one voice and only one.
Her wandering moon, her stars, her golden sun,
Her woods and waters, in all lands and times,
In one deep song proclaim the wondrous story.
They tell it to each other in the sky,
Upon the winds they send it sounding high,
Jehovah's wisdom, goodness, power, and glory.
I hear it come from mountain, cliff, and tree,
Ten thousand voices in one voice united;
On every side the song encircles me,
The whole round world reveres and is delighted.
Ah! why, when heaven and earth lift up their voice,
Ah! why should man alone nor worship nor rejoice!

— The Religious Offering (1835) XXVI.

God Worshipped in His Works

"The heavens declare the glory of God: and the firmament showeth his handy work. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard." — Ps. 19. 1, 2, 3.

Men use a different speech in different climes,
But Nature hath one voice and only one.
Her wandering moon, her stars, her golden sun,
Her woods and waters, in all lands and times,
In one deep song proclaim the wondrous story.
They tell it to each other in the sky,
Upon the winds they send it sounding high,
Jehovah's wisdom, goodness, power, and glory.
I hear it come from mountain, cliff, and tree,
Ten thousand voices in one voice united;
On every side the song encircles me,
The whole round world reveres and is delighted.
Ah! why, when heaven and earth lift up their voice,
Ah! why should man alone nor worship nor rejoice?

— from The Religious Offering (1835) XXVI.

The Highest Homage

The soul in the state of true peace or rest, is the kingdom of God, because it constantly renders him the highest homage. And it does so, because its state of peace or rest is the result, and may be said to be the completion, of every other state. It is not necessary for a soul, in such a state, to make costly sacrifices, to go to distant places, or to bow in temples, as if the true homage of the heart could be rendered only or chiefly by outward acts. Wherever it is, provided it is where God in his providence requires it to be, it is itself the highest worship and homage of God. The Infinite Mind delights in it, as a soul continually offering to himself the highest reverence and praise. The state of holy peace is more than that of penitence, because, although penitence implies a sorrow for sin, it does not necessarily imply a conquest over sin. It is more than good desire, because such desires are not acceptable in the sight of God without faith attending them. It is more than faith, because it is the end, of which faith is the means or instrument. It is more than gratitude, because it includes gratitude, as a whole includes a part. It is the result, the expression, the completion of the whole. It is man, harmonizing with God. It is God, dwelling and living in man.

He, therefore, who is in true peace of spirit, is a continual worshiper. He is himself his temple, and his heart is his altar. The fire is always burning; the incense always ascends.

— edited from A Treatise on Divine Union (1851) Part 8, Chapter 12.

Humanity Demands a Personal God

Humanity demands a [personal] God who can thus be recognized and worshiped. The instinct of reverence and homage, which evidently pervades the human heart, so much so that it has found its place as an attribute of humanity in all lands and all ages, requires, and cannot be satisfied with anything short of a personal God. In the view of the great masses of men, to deny the personality of God, is, to all practical purposes and results, much the same, as we have already intimated as to deny the existence of God. So that we run no hazard in saying, that a personal God is one of the great religious necessities of humanity. Religion is the interior and domestic tie, which makes the united family of the finite and the Infinite. And without a Being, who is not only supreme in his attributes, but who is approachable, and can be addressed and confided in, on the basis furnished by a deific personality, the human race is necessarily left in the condition of a bewildered and sorrowing orphanage.

And we may add that the opposite doctrine that which denies God’s personality, seems to us to be full of danger in other respects. It is not only the abnegation of religion, but of practical morality. The doctrine of impersonality, admitting that it sometimes comes before us with learned and imposing pretensions, will be found, if allowed to go unquestioned, to be attended not only with the rupture of God and man, but of man and his fellow-man. It is a doctrine which not only strikes boldly at the religious intuitions of the great heart of humanity, but is an inlet, through its want of practical power, to hostility, fraud, cruelty, and all varieties of crime. No theory of practical morals has ever been constructed on the basis of the impersonality of God, which is available against the mighty evils that continually imperil man’s social condition. The audacity of wrong and crime is not frightened by an abstraction. Nor is it much afraid of a positive principle of life, which has no self-regulated thought and volition. If it were possible for impersonality to leave us a God at all, which it is not, it would be a God with no eyes to see, and no ears to hear, and no hands to handle, and no head to think, and no heart to feel, and no will to execute; — a God, if any one should object to the material form of the expressions, with nothing which our spiritual eyes could see, or our spiritual ears could hear, or our hearts’ necessities could appeal to; — a God, in any light in which it is possible to consider him, without a voice to cheer us in our efforts to do right, and without a hand to help us against the dangers which would certainly assail and overwhelm us.

— edited from Absolute Religion (1873) Chapter 2.

The Personality of God

Within a few years no small number of writers of acknowledged learning and ability have greatly disturbed the traditional belief as well as the religious hopes and consolations of a large portion of the Christian world, by affirming and attempting to prove the impersonality of the Divine Being.

It cannot well be doubted, that the personality of God is one of the doctrines contained in the teachings of Christ. It is difficult to see how he could address God as his Father, and in terms implying the greatest veneration and love, without believing in the Personality of God.

When, in the trials and sorrows of the Cross, he prayed, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do;” and when in the final agony of his spirit he said, “my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me,” it cannot well be supposed that he believed he was praying to an abstraction, or to a spiritual generalization, or a great undefined principle of life, instead of a percipient Being, who in the mental or spiritual sense had ears to hear, and a heart to feel. We cannot doubt, that the careful readers of the New Testament, in view of what is there said having a bearing upon the subject now before us, fully and earnestly accept the idea, as the only one which can be reasonably entertained, that Jesus believed in the divine personality. This wonderful Being [Christ]...  had a heart that worshiped. His intellectual powers, which are sometimes overshadowed and concealed by the manifestations of his great goodness, revealed and identified the object of his worship; and his loving heart, which added emotion to perception, accepted the revelation and yielded its homage. But affirm that God is not a personal being, only an underlying principle or causative force which permeates all existences and develops itself in all the forms of existence, without the intelligence and responsibility which are implied in personality and only by means of fixed and inexorable law, and from that moment it is intuitionally evident, that there is no revelation of an object of worship because no such object exists. And worship itself, which is so obviously one of the leading characteristics of the inward life of Christ, necessarily ceases, because there is no object to which it can attach itself.

— edited from Absolute Religion (1873) Chapter 2.