How to get from public church services the help they have to give to us is one of the most important practical questions to which attention can be turned. Private devotion is not enough; the honour of God and the needs of our spiritual nature alike require associated worship. To neglect the public services is to deprive ourselves of one of the greatest aids to religious culture. No doubt there are rich possibilities of spiritual help in these services, if we know how to find it. The question is worth considering.
It is quite possible to attend church services, even with commendable regularity, and yet receive no spiritual profit. There is not holy atmosphere in the house of God that is in itself medicinal or tonic to our souls. There is no filtration of grace into our hearts that goes on unconsciously and without agency of our own, while we sit in our soft pew in the sanctuary. Forms of worship, whether plain or elaborate, are empty without the sincere homage and faith of loving hearts. They carry up to God just what we put into them; they bring down to us from God just what we, with prayer and faith, draw out of them. Two persons may sit side by side, and take like part, outwardly in the exercises of devotion; yet from one rises to God pure incense and an acceptable offering, and from the other the empty mockery of a heartless and formal service; the one goes away strengthened and blessed, and the other carries away but a cold, unblessed heart. Whatever the forms of public worship may be, the heart must be engaged, or the worship is vain and unprofitable.
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